Todd McComb: Jazz archive, 07/2011-03/2012

I've become rather eager to cycle this "blog" page
over to more recent entries, hiding some of my more exploratory
& preliminary comments especially early in the
first nine months of undertaking this project. However, I did
want to present some topics & comments about some of the most
contemporary music before I did, and I think the later entries from
the previous series turned out fairly well. Nothing is ever really
finished, however, and so my haste to "finish" what I was
doing there certainly leaves a wide range of loose ends on which
to pull. Not to mention discussing the new things people are doing
now and subsequently.

Like most areas of human endeavor, a little knowledge of this
subject can be a dangerous thing. What am I even talking about
here? I've retained the word "Jazz" in the title, although
many people prefer "Creative Improvisation" or the like.
The latter seems extremely cross-cultural to me, as literally
speaking, creative improvisation plays a role in a wide variety of
music. It's something more particular that I'm discussing here,
and whether that something is really jazz or some sort of form
arising from the intersections of improvisation, European-American
harmony & technology, and cross-cultural infusions especially
in the area of rhythm might depend largely on how many words one
prefers to spew. Or maybe how conservative one is with regard to
the idea of jazz. Or how protective of one's culture. Any of those
arguments can be made, but I do know there is something in this
intersection, and that something is usually classified in the big
picture world of business and media as jazz.

Of course, having said that last part explicitly makes me shudder
a bit. Who really wants to obey the big picture of business and
media? In any event, we have here what we have here, and perhaps
there's really nothing more to define it than the
index of recordings I'm recommending. Or perhaps it should
simply be defined as United States music, of the improvisatory and
more demanding (or intellectual) sort, although that sort of label
still lacks the counter-culture edge that intersects these styles
in various ways. But then that discounts the times when something
from the jazz world has burst totally into the mainstream. But
then I could say that mainstream appropriation of counter-culture
art isn't usually a way to lift oppression at all, but something
more insidious. Jazz, and ideas of jazz, somehow manage to straddle
all these things.

So for me, interesting music in this style — whatever it
is — involves some sort of beginning structure, call it a
composition in a general sense, and some sort of creative spontaneous
interplay between musicians. At the moment, I find myself pulling
almost entirely away from solo performances. Collective improvisation
might imply something about simultaneous soloing, or free form, but
for me is more about everyone in the ensemble having something
interesting to contribute, even if they take turns. That said,
having more than one thing happening at a time is often more
interesting. And as to structure? I'd describe totally unstructured
music as having each musician playing at random, without reference
to any musical style or culture, and without hearing the others.
So structure would be some negation of that, whether a tune set in
a harmonic context, abstract interval or rhythmic relationships,
or emergent structure from listening & reacting within a context.
For the latter, the context isn't necessarily explicit, but rather
"who you are" — which can take plenty of pondering.
I've been finding a lot of value in pondering interpersonal
relationships generally through this lens, which is a big part of
what is making the idea of "collective improvisation" so
appealing. That describes life, really, doesn't it?

When it comes to recordings, I'll paraphrase what I said at the
beginning of this project: It takes more than inspired spontaneity
to sustain interest over many hearings. Some recordings can be
very exciting & interesting & novel, but once heard even
once or twice, don't have much left to offer. What I do not want
to do is be dismissive of their initial value, however, because it
can be considerable. Maintaining a list of favorites, though, does
tend to miss this dynamic, which will hopefully be captured in
entries themselves. What makes a great recording? I'd say,
generally, it's a clear conception & careful planning about
what you're trying to do, some fluency in the language(s) involved,
and then the right energy on the spot to really pull it off. Or
maybe you just get lucky sometimes.

6 July 2011

I realize now that I actually saw Book of Three mentioned
on Taylor Ho Bynum's website,
but that was before I took more of an interest in John Hébert's
music, and it was a recording not readily available in the US. A
discussion of this recording oriented around Bynum makes sense at
the moment.

Like Steve Coleman, Bynum
(b.1975) has some free downloads on his website, including a live
set by his sextet in 2008, which he describes as perhaps their best
live performance. I wasn't overly taken with this recording featuring
two electric guitars & viola, but it includes some creative
colors (with mediocre sound quality). More recently, Taylor has
headlined on two more intimate trio recordings, Book of Three
and now Next with Joe Morris (b.1955) on guitar & Sara
Schoenbeck on bassoon. Next was recorded in November 2009,
whereas Book of Three was partly recorded a week earlier in
that same month, but mostly in March 2010, so the releases are
somewhat reversed chronologically, with Next being released
only this June.

Trios with less standard combinations of instruments seem to be
the avant garde trend right now, and I've embraced that trend with
Pool School (and my convoluted
discussion around it, posted on June 21, as well as with e.g.
Double Demon). I have yet
to really get interested in the sorts of interactions involved in
a jazz duo, so the trio is the most intimate setting I've been
discussing. One might say these sorts of trios stand out less by
their instrumentation than by their lack of a leader... both more
egalitarian in what they play, and in the ways instruments shift
roles within a piece. The latter style of group interaction
particularly appeals to me. Of these two albums, the trumpet-bass-drums
combination is obviously the more conventional, and Book of
Three includes many worthwhile ideas. I find Cleaver and
especially Hébert consistently appealing, so the pieces
really rise or fall with Bynum's trumpet. At times, his ideas bring
the group together very well, and at times they kind of fall flat.
In the case of Next, the music is even more textural (in a
Braxton-like way) between the two winds, with some interesting
guitar work surrounding them. This is a more experimental effort,
exploring sonorities. Although I've enjoyed some cross-section of
Bynum's music, I'm still left wondering what his personal style
really is.

Since Joe Morris plays
on Next, I should mention that he appears on many interesting
recordings, whether on guitar or bass. Looking at his discography,
even restricting to recordings from the past few years, is dizzying.
I am not sure what to make of his output. I have listened to
Camera (recorded in 2010) several times, and generally enjoyed
it, although the "point" of the recording never really
jumps out and presents itself. It ultimately seems like yet another
recording, without any clear reason for existing, although I do
certainly enjoy Katt Hernandez on violin as well as Morris himself
on guitar. His individually plucked note style has almost a
percussive ringing quality (akin to vibraphone?) that frames various
other textures. (He actually does some strumming on Next,
which I understand to be unusual for him.) Morris is another
performer with some quality ideas, but it's hard to grasp what he's
really trying to do overall.

19 July 2011

I had declined to order Brazilian tenor sax player
Ivo Perelman's Soulstorm
album on Clean Feed, even though I noticed it on Daniel Levin's
discography, because the description of the album talked about
"primal screams" and generally suggested an arbitrary or
shock-value approach to improvisation. However, I was subsequently
tempted by The Hour of the Star (released last month, recorded
in 2010), featuring as it does Gerald Cleaver and Joe Morris (and
Matthew Shipp on 4 of the 6 tracks). That seemed like an interesting
combination of people. In any event, I found that Perelman was not
haphazard or "primal" at all, but rather has a very
sophisticated sense of tonal space. Much like with Kris Davis's
music, and really any good atonal music of the Western sort, the
atonality arises from a thorough command of tonality. I subsequently
ordered Soulstorm (recorded 2009), which also includes bassist
Torbjörn Zetterberg, and consists of both a studio recording
and a live recording made the same day.

Although I found Perelman's command of musical line rather
compelling, his apparent emphasis on spontaneity is less so. The
liner notes for Soulstorm discuss how the three musicians,
who had never met and are from different continents, spent just a
few days together before recording the studio & live sets. It
was also the first meeting for the band in The Hour of the
Star, who apparently did tour together after releasing the
recording. Consequently, these recordings are great examples of
recordings that are exhilarating to hear the first time or two, but
do not hold as much interest over time. Of the two, Soulstorm
wears itself out faster, whereas The Hour of the Star features
more experienced players and denser overall textures. That said,
the idea to do studio & live albums together for Soulstorm
is an intriguing one, if given the specific constraint (or energy?)
of just having met. It would be interesting to hear Perelman play
with a group that was more familiar with him, though, because he
has a very striking and individual style. Tangentially, both albums
have track titles taken entirely from books by Clarice Lispector.
I'm not sure if the titles have any real bearing on what is played;
it seems more like a series of free improvisations. Perelman is
clearly the leader & soloist on these albums, although other
musicians do make their marks.

25 July 2011

To turn to a much more mainstream release than I've been discussing
recently, I have recently added Ari
Hoenig's Lines of Oppression (recorded a month prior to
the earlier release, Punkbop)
to the site. This is on the Naïve label, which is part of a
major corporation in France, although apparently not well-distributed
here. At any rate, Hoenig apparently has a big following in France,
and this recording shows him with a quartet of Gilad Hekselman,
Tigran Hamasyan and a couple of different bass players (Orlando Le
Fleming, and Chris Tordini, the latter a younger player who I've
enjoyed on some avant garde releases). Lines of Oppression
starts with a couple of "heavy" Hoenig compositions, where
the melodic lines can be repetitive at times, but the rhythmic
action is intense. There is something of a new age feel to the
harmonic development, perhaps akin to the way a sitar gat will
repeat a simple melody while the drummer solos, but the drum part
is so busy that it seems like a great deal happens over a relatively
short span of time. There is then a more touchy-feely Wedding Song
(which has quiet vocals), a beatbox intro by Hamasyan, and then a
couple of well-known standards, back to a couple of pieces by Hoenig,
and another standard leading into Hamasyan's trance piece for the
last track. The progression of pieces in the program is well done,
in terms of the way it uses standards and original material.

Likewise with a beatbox track is Dafnis Prieto's Si O Si
Quartet Live recording. This is an older recording from 2009,
but makes something of a comparison with Lines of Oppression
as a drummer's album. I've been following Prieto since noticing
his association with Henry Threadgill, but haven't found that any
of his albums really click for me. The older Absolute Quintet,
with Jason Lindner and others, is interesting, but despite Ben
Ratliff's quote on the cover, it doesn't seem that the other
performers are really handling Prieto's rhythms with any sustained
fluency. With Si O Si Quartet Live, there is definitely
more familiarity between the ensemble, but as with Lines of
Oppression, the resulting melodies are often fairly simple.
Nonetheless, the distinct Cuban feel is enjoyable.

It's difficult for me not to associate the beat box idea with
Indian classical bols. Online histories say that it was derived
independently in hip hop music, which is plausible, although the
overlap at times seems far too strong to be coincidence (and we
also have instances from e.g. John McLaughlin going back a while).
Anyway, I guess I'm not terribly enthusiastic, but it can work as
an introduction, as used on Hoenig's album. That album does have
a distinct "now" feel to it, especially with musicians
from such different backgrounds who nonetheless have played together
quite a bit. Although it's not groundbreaking, it is an enjoyable
slice of 2011, complete with reflections on other places and other
times.

26 July 2011

One thing about declaring myself "up to date" when
flipping this blog is that it opens up a natural ongoing question
for discussion: What's the biggest omission I made?

Right now, my own answer to that question would be
Kuntu by the Michel Edelin
Trio, released in 2009. Steve Lehman appears as a guest on three
tracks, and I subsequently remembered seeing it listed in his
discography. I even took a look at the description of the album,
and found the rhetoric around a "flautist's album" somewhat
off-putting. Later, I didn't really notice Kuntu when I was
perusing the RogueArt catalog in the course of figuring out where
to find Book of Three, discussed last month. So what prompted
me to seek out Kuntu? I've been developing an interest in
the flute as a jazz instrument, in part confirmed by Henry Threadgill's
playing on the instrument, but as much as anything in the course
of thinking about some sonorities and combinations that I'd like
to pursue.

As it turns out, Kuntu is a fantastic album. Steve Lehman
is interesting as always, but I don't even find his contribution
necessary for my appreciation. This is Edelin's music, so he
apparently deserves much of the attention, but Jean-Jacques Avenel
is also fantastic on bass. This leads me back to The Sixth
Jump, by Benoît Delbecq, again. I strongly revisited
this trio album after being captivated by John Hébert's
Spiritual Lover, and think
that Delbecq tends to dominate the proceedings on The Sixth
Jump, with his rhythm section often in repetitive (although
with interesting rhythms) roles. I think this even more now, having
heard Avenel's superb playing on Kuntu. He has a very large
part, and it's well worth it. The interplay of flute & bass
creates a wonderful polyrhythmic texture, with John Betsch adding
accents on drums. The Sixth Jump uses explicitly African
rhythms, and Kuntu likewise has an explicit connection in
its Bantu title. There are other influences, however, including
Bulgarian, and of course the French sense of line.

All told, Kuntu has become a definite favorite. The
different tracks have different characters, the music is consistently
engaging & provocative, and the album makes a satisfying
whole.

29 August 2011

I was greatly anticipating Steve Coleman's followup to
Harvesting Semblances and Affinities,
released last year. That followup did appear recently,
The Mancy of Sound. Besides the creativity and accomplishment
of that recording, one reason I was eagerly anticipating a followup
to Harvesting Semblances and Affinities is that much of that
album was recorded 5 years ago. What is Steve Coleman (b.1956)
doing now? Well, it turns out The Mancy of Sound doesn't
move us much farther ahead in time. Most of the album is from the
same February 2007 recording session that produced Flos Ut Rosa
Floruit on the prior album, and the other two tracks were
recorded in July 2007. Superficially, the main stylistic developments
are more emphasis on vocals, and more percussion. Neither is
particularly welcome to me, although The Mancy of Sound is
still a striking album. Vocally, there are more actual lyrics,
including in English, plus two uncredited male vocalists on a 4-piece
suite that forms the middle of the program. At times, the texture
is vocal & drums. That said, some more comments on what makes
Steve Coleman's style so striking: It's basically two elements,
the short angular phrases, and the rhythmic independence between
the melody players. The latter exist in distinct rhythmic layers
or areas that, with the help of the short phrases, fit together
into a larger whole. The phrases on The Mancy of Sound are
shorter and denser than even Harvesting Semblances and Affinities.
It's a very geometric effect, prismatic even. Steve Coleman will
be in California for the Monterey Jazz Festival in a few weeks, and
although he happens to be playing the same day my oldest child
leaves for college for the first time, I'm hoping I'll have the
chance to hear him elsewhere while he's in the area.

Tyshawn Sorey performs on both of Steve Coleman's Pi recordings,
as well as on e.g. Pete Robbins' Silent
Z album, and with various other interesting musicians.
Sorey also has extensive composing credits, including on Door
and Paradoxical Frog (two albums I've discussed in the past),
as well as a couple of previous albums as a leader. That said,
releasing Oblique I on Pi Recordings seems like something
of a milestone, considering that label's highly acclaimed recent
releases. My reaction to Oblique I is fairly simple: There
are a lot of interesting musical ideas, illustrating a broad range
of ordering principles associated with jazz in 2011, but there's
no particular message or stylistic niche addressed. What is the
point of this music, other than that Sorey wanted to write music?
This does not come through to me, although it's certainly technically
competent. Sorey does write some commentary, emphasizing that music
is of a particular time & place, and should not be separated
from everyday life. I agree. Yet, what is this album? It is a
group of pieces explicitly written 3-5 years ago, titled merely by
ordinal number, and played by a somewhat different group than
originally worked through most or all of them. From what I've read,
Sorey worked on a lot of this music in a group with Pete Robbins,
and although Loren Stillman plays well on Oblique I, I do
find myself thinking it should be Robbins. As for the numbered
compositions, this is a mainstay of no less a figure than Anthony
Braxton, so perhaps I should refrain from criticizing. I can
understand the, presumed, idea that music is about music (which is
more about number) and not about words. Many compositions and/or
group improvisations on recordings I've discussed here are clearly
arbitrarily named. Yet what of this time & place business?
Even arbitrariness is a connection. I've seen it said that Steve
Coleman does some strange musical things, but he always has a reason
for it. I believe it. What's Tyshawn Sorey's reason for this
music? OK, so that was pretty harsh. There are definitely some
interesting musical ideas on this album, and I remain interested
in Sorey as a drummer and as a leader.

While not avant garde or with much of a link to the New York
music scene, another recent new release from an artist mentioned
here previously is Woody Witt's Pots and Kettles. Although
I've enjoyed Witt's A Conversation
and First Impression albums,
Pots and Kettles didn't make a strong impression. I do
appreciate that Witt continues to record with a variety of
musicians.

30 August 2011

Although I've been working in some listening whenever I can,
especially as there is just so much going on out there in this broad
field, obviously the alignment of time & mood needed to write
up these thoughts comes in spurts. I'm breaking up these entries
fairly arbitrarily, but let me keep going.

One thing about jazz or creative improvisation recordings is
that they get released out of sequence. This isn't the norm in
other musical styles where I've been involved, such as medieval,
but in this arena, musicians are often appearing on various projects
that appear on various labels, and even if something was recorded
a year earlier, the later item might appear first, etc. I try to
keep an eye on chronologies, especially when considering stylistic
development. Even there, some projects are obviously more adventurous
than others, and that needn't follow a chronology.

That said, it's time already to revisit some of the intertwined
threads from my discussion of Pool
School in June. A new recording by Ingrid Laubrock's trio
Sleepthief, also featuring Tom Rainey (with Liam Noble),
The Madness of Crowds has just
appeared. This recording was made a mere 5 days after Pool
School, as a followup to a recording by the same three musicians
recorded in 2007 while Laubrock was still based in London. That
puts the chronology of a very eventful 2010 for Laubrock as
Anti-House, Pool School, The Madness of Crowds,
with Paradoxical Frog (featuring Kris Davis and Tyshawn
Sorey) recorded in August 2009.

With Kris Davis on both Paradoxical Frog &
Anti-House, I'm going to step back and give a chronology for
her trio albums: Three (6/08), Good
Citizen (5/09), and Paradoxical Frog (8/09). I
continue to find Good Citizen extremely appealing, especially
considering it tackles the straight piano trio format, so am very
interested in whatever she decides to record next. Notes on
Three, a recording by the SKM trio, including Stephen Gauci
and Michael Bisio: This recording starts out quite strongly, with
impressive playing from Davis, but there are many times in the album
where she is either silent or basically comping, and I don't find
it terribly appealing overall. Bisio does have an interesting bass
technique, to be sure, although while the technique he has for e.g.
tapping on harmonics is impressive, it's also generally repetitive.
(This reminds me of much of Elliott Sharp's playing on Octal,
with similar rhythmic tapping that must take great control, but I
get tired of listening to it.) I discussed my thoughts on
Paradoxical Frog back with the Pool School discussion.
Both of those ensembles supposedly have new albums coming out.

In The Madness of Crowds, Laubrock's vision as a leader
really comes together. This is a highly successful album, featuring
a variety of moods, and fantastic interplay between the performers.
Whereas the first Sleepthief album has some tentative qualities
in its conception, The Madness of Crowds is practically
explosive. That is probably a strange thing to say about an album
that includes so many quiet sections. However, it's a quiet full
of passion, or maybe a passion full of calm. Although it does not
offer the same sort of radical transformation of time & space
as Pool School, The Madness of Crowds is more narrative,
yet with such offbeat rhythms and "changes" that it seems
to be more than one story at a time. For the most part, Liam Noble
on piano serves to add some sanity to the proceedings. The titles
are mostly taken from Charles Mackay's classic text, and generally
seem as relevant now as they were in 1841. It's not as though
crowds have become any less mad. Although it's slow-moving at
times, The Madness of Crowds executes a clear musical vision
with creativity and energy.

30 August 2011

On the theme of quiet albums, there is a recent release by
Harris Eisenstadt (b.1975)
with Ellery Eskelin & Angelica Sanchez called
September Trio. All 7 tracks
are called September and generally have a quiet, languid air
presumably evocative of that month. Since so many of my activities
are tied to the academic year, September is a month where things
really get hopping for me, so it's a little hard to relate, perhaps.
At times I find it easier to think more in terms of May-September
romance, because this album has something of that mood. The release
also includes a nice essay by Nate Wooley extolling the personal
virtues of Harris Eisenstadt.

Although I have heard Eisenstadt in a variety of music, and
generally enjoyed his work as a leader, such as on Canada Day,
I had not felt any particular resonance with his earlier albums.
Here, in contrast, is an almost extreme concentration of theme
— although the different Septembers are different compositions
— instead of the this-and-that of Canada Day. As can be inferred
pretty easily from a variety of things I've written here, I've not
generally been too excited about slow songs in jazz (although e.g.
Spiritual Lover has some very
appealing slow sections), so I would not have expected an album of
slow & quiet to have much appeal. Perhaps that is the reason
I feel like Harris Eisenstadt's style has really come together with
this release. It's quite distinctive in those two senses, but it's
also (and consequently) full of subtleties. September Trio
ends up being quite engaging, especially with more hearings. I'll
also add that the understated sophistication of the compositions
does yield some "rough around the edges" moments during
the improvisation that come out with more hearings too. I discussed
Angelica Sanchez's Life Between back in June, and here she
provides excellent support with some very "straight" piano
playing, doing especially well with chord articulation. This is
the first I've listened to
Ellery
Eskelin (b.1959) much, and while at first I found his tone too
reedy, it grew on me quickly. His tenor is usually in sharp relief
on these songs, particularly with Eisenstadt playing very quiet
percussion, and the way he shades his notes is critical to the
success of this album. Altogether, this is a superb album awash
in an array of subtleties of a particular niche mood, and a fine
& unexpected progression of Eisenstadt as a leader. There's a
very palpable sense of silence when it ends that yields a definite
feeling of satisfaction.

I'll also add that the combination of quality & variety on
Clean Feed continues
to be rather amazing.

30 August 2011

While waiting on the arrival of some other items to compare,
before I write up some new things here, I've been thinking more
about my reaction to Tyshawn Sorey's Oblique I album. Part
of my negative reaction is undoubtedly about high expectations.

If I just block out the sax, and listen to the other musicians,
who are more or less performing as a rhythm section, I find it works
rather well. I can even get a sense of what the music is
"about" that way, which was a criticism. Yet the sax
dominates the sound by volume, and even has a solo track. So I
don't know what the idea was there. It's not as though Loren
Stillman is an untalented player. His playing with Sorey was interesting
enough that I made a point to hear him on a couple of other albums.
His most recent as a leader, I believe, is Winter Fruits on
Pirouet (recorded in 2008). Although that album of originals mostly
by Stillman (with two by drummer Ted Poor) has some weak tracks on
it in terms of material, the ensemble conception (with Gary Versace
on organ, and Nate Radley on guitar) is excellent and the sax playing
is engaging. There are some strong tracks too, and it's well worth
hearing. Stillman is also notably good as a sideman on German
guitarist Sebastian Noelle's album Koan on Fresh Sound New
Talent (recorded in 2010). Pianist George Colligan plays on a few
tracks on that album too, and his contribution is definitely a
highlight. Noelle wrote all the music, and it's a pretty good
album, with a very understated (or polished) Balkan influence.

18 September 2011

A recent recording that caught my attention is
Siren by Uri Caine. Although
it isn't clear where to place this album in terms of musical style
amongst the various jazz-type recordings I've enjoyed, the instrumental
ensemble is quite clear: This is a traditional acoustic piano trio,
featuring John Hébert on bass and Ben Perowsky on drums.
Hébert has been involved in a lot of interesting projects,
apparently taking over some of these slots from Drew Gress, and
makes a fine contribution here. Perhaps it's ironic, or just a
sign of my own shortsightedness, but ever since I wondered aloud
whether the piano (with its rigid notes and articulation) had much
of a place left in 21st century jazz, I've found a number of piano
recordings appealing. In this case, Siren is not an avant
garde release in terms of musical structure, nor is it mainstream
jazz, but it does include a nice range of moods and forms. Given
Caine's work with Mahler (doing jazz versions of Mahler works),
that's a natural orientation here, with the harmonies engaging in
a similar stretching of the tonal system without ever quite leaving
it behind. In that sense, this album forms something of a middle
ground to a couple of other "straight" piano trios that
I continue to enjoy, Come Together
by George Colligan and Good
Citizen by Kris Davis. Come Together, beginning
with a Beatles song, stays more within the traditional harmonic
idioms of jazz (and related popular styles, with some dissonant
passages at times, as is also typical), whereas Good Citizen
simply blows tonality away at times. Good Citizen is a
fantastic album, but some people find it unlistenable accordingly.
With Siren, one gets more of the early 20th century pre-serial
classical extended tonal style that listeners are often more willing
to embrace. Siren combines that particular sense of harmony
with a broad range of accessible rhythmic ideas, from traditional
jazz rhythms to ideas a bit farther afield in world music. One
could compare it to Bartok in
that sense, but Caine has a distinctly different style. Playing
in a traditional trio format with an accomplished jazz bassist in
Hébert, as well as Caine's very jazzy phrasing on the piano,
assures a traditional jazz feel to the album. Both from the
perspective of classical tonality and jazz pianism, Siren
has roots in the 1920s, even if the innovative aspects of those
idioms never interacted at the time. One can almost imagine an
old-time American dance hall, but with tricky harmonies, or a
Viennese "school" founded by emigrant jazz performers.
This is kind of a singular item, not a pastiche in any sense, and
very worthwhile. It would be interesting to read what Caine has
to say about this album, but I have not found such a discussion,
and have taken some extra time to articulate my own impression.

Speaking of Kris Davis, Clean Feed released two new recordings
featuring her this month. I would not normally seek out either of
these formats, but was wanting to hear more from Kris Davis.
Aeriol is a solo piano disc, recorded just a few days after
Paradoxical Frog in 2009, but in Portugal. Since the
interaction between musicians is an element of jazz that I find
crucially interesting, the solo format isn't of much appeal. However,
it's an opportunity to hear Davis play a standard on the opening
track (All The Things You Are), and the extended &
original prepared piano piece of the second track (Saturn
Return) is well worth hearing. The song Good Citizen
also makes an appearance, amongst the more typical solo piano
originals. The other release (this one recorded in 2011) is
Novela, for which Davis has arranged a program of Tony Malaby
compositions for a Nonet of seven winds (one of whom is Joachim
Badenhorst, apropos my next entry), piano and percussion (John
Hollenbeck). Malaby is a talented player with some interesting
music, so hearing this material set in an orchestrated harmonic
context is worthwhile. I can't say as I prefer it to more intimate
& spontaneous settings, but it's well-executed and provides
another view.

27 September 2011

As the Kuntu example
illustrates, in the process of declaring myself "up to date"
for the year 2011, probably my biggest omission was European
musicians. I was aware of this blind spot, but getting a handle
on where or what my interest in European jazz-type music would be
was fairly challenging, and so I've let it develop more slowly.

Recently I've had more of a chance to listen to different European
performers, particularly orienting more around labels such as Clean
Feed or Leo or Intakt, instead of more mainstream outlets such as
ECM. Although on none of those labels, the first all-European
release that has really struck me is
Polylemma on the Red Toucan
label out of Quebec (which I had not noticed previously). I actually
came to this album in a roundabout way, noting first the recent
release Klippe by Thomas Heberer on Clean Feed (which I
subsequently learned was originally released on vinyl on
No Business), then the
HNH release earlier on Clean Feed, which seems to have
attracted quite a bit of attention. Each of those albums contains
a different three of the four performers on Polylemma, so
seeking Polylemma as something of a superset made sense at
the time. Anyway, HNH (released 2010) consists of three
musicians from Germany, drummer Joe Hertenstein (who organized the
group), quarter-tone trumpeter
Thomas Heberer (b.1965;
who is the other major composer for the group), and bassist
Pascal Niggenkemper.
Polylemma adds Belgian bass clarinetist
Joachim Badenhorst,
and Klippe includes the two wind players & bassist without
Hertenstein. That is the order in which they were recorded.

I had no idea what to expect with Polylemma (released
2011). It is generally a quiet album, with each of the four players
given quite a bit of space, and everything clearly audible. However,
it is not really minimalist, as musical ideas develop and are
exchanged fairly rapidly. Within that context, material spans the
European & American traditions, with more tonal structures,
serial lines, microtones, and other postmodern constructions. The
players on Polylemma moved to New York a few years ago, and
one thing Polylemma & HNH do quite well is engage
a distinct "New York jazz" feel. That's partly rhythmic,
but also the way some lines are developed harmonically. There's a
correspondence between abstract pitch ideas and more visceral
structures, and it might be argued that "jazz" requires
a visceral element. It's the resulting sense of balance that is
particularly sophisticated on Polylemma (recorded live to
2-track in one room), and I was immediately taken by the album.
This is a case where I enjoyed it the first time through, not really
knowing what to expect, and then enjoyed it even more the second
and third times (which is where many initially appealing albums
start to seem routine, particularly "concept" albums).
I subsequently got HNH and Klippe from Clean Feed.

As something of a diversion, somewhere in this sequence, I noticed
that HNH is — by far — the most popular album
on the Clean Feed site according to user voting. Now, I have no
idea if this user rating really means anything... perhaps one fan
voted 100 times. In any event, HNH has (as I write this)
153 votes with a 5-star average. I decided to take a look at this,
just in case user voting would be interesting. As it turns out,
most of my favorite Clean Feed albums have received relatively
little interest or even so-so marks, so clearly our tastes do not
align very closely. However, I did note the next most popular album
there is Roll Call by the Portuguese bassist Hugo Antunes,
followed by First Reason by German drummer Christian Lillinger
(b.1984), and then Grünen by a trio featuring Lillinger.
All are interesting albums, and all are European, which seems to
be the theme for high user voting. First Reason, Lillinger's
first album, was recorded in Ibiza with the help of pianist Joachim
Kühn. It alternates high energy "jazzy" tracks,
some with piano, with others that meld the instruments into one
sound. Grünen is a trio with a more refined sound
world... this is a live album, all improvised, and made a very
strong first impression. Repeated hearings make it seem kind of
repetitive in some of the novel techniques the musicians are using
and with the rotating roles; it's a clear example of a live album
that is well worth hearing, but isn't a hear again-and-again album.
It will be interesting to hear what Lillinger and others do in the
future. Roll Call is an energetic blend of styles, with two
reed players and two drummers usually orbiting a punchy bass line
and projecting a post-hardbop feel. Antunes creates his own
(European) sound within a mostly traditional jazz concept.

Returning to the subject of the two recordings closely related
to Polylemma, these musicians have developed a personal style
very rapidly. If I understand correctly, recording HNH was
the first time all three played together (December 2008). There
is a raw energy about that recording, and one can hear the way they
want to unite their backgrounds in Germany with the New York scene.
It's not as refined as Polylemma, but has that "this
is the start of something new" feeling about it. Already with
Polylemma in February 2010, there is a very distinct style,
with Hertenstein & Heberer alternating composer credits.
Klippe (recorded June 2010) is Heberer's music, based on a
new style of notation (some of which appears on Polylemma).
Heberer has been generous enough to explain his Cookbook notation
on his website, and provide many examples. It's a fine concept in
the ongoing process of creating personal syntheses of composition
and improvisation, providing whatever elements of form or melody
or rhythm that are inherent to a piece, while leaving the rest to
the improvisers. Some of Heberer's pieces are more constrained
this way than others (and anyone interested should
have a look.)
Klippe is a very intimate album without the drums, and the
musical concept provides a lot of space for introspection. Some
of this character is found in Heberer's pieces on Polylemma,
but Klippe is an extended album in that mood. Although I
find the concept to be very sound, and the album to be interesting
& enjoyable, it also seems that the performers could use more
time developing their ideas around this style. The improvisers are
asked to inject their own musical ideas into the structure of the
pieces at various points (obviously!), and those spontaneous ideas
aren't always that engaging. The result is basically a fascinating
skeleton with some tantalizing "meat" but more is needed
to really flesh it out. As quickly as these musicians developed
this style from 2008 to 2010, there is little doubt that more will
follow. Perhaps a good point of reference would be the Daniel Levin
Quartet, which developed a very intimate group improvisation style
over the course of several years. Heberer has chosen a very ambitious
path with Klippe.

It's amazing how well-rounded an album Polylemma already
is, though, "Record of the Year" material, as the saying
goes, given its combination of originality and polish. I don't
know anything of Hertenstein outside of Polylemma (and he
does write liner notes in which he describes it very succinctly as
"European quartet improvisation developed in New York City"
among other details) and HNH, but have heard Badenhorst with
several groups, and am expecting a new piano trio album led by
Niggenkemper to arrive soon.

27 September 2011

I've wanted to comment on a few more recent recordings in the
general "world fusion" category. I've had some very mixed
feelings about these sorts of efforts already expressed here, and
have been working on clarifying my own thoughts and what my interests
might actually be. One could easily argue that jazz began as a
fusion of musical cultures, and so the topic might be more central
than it seems. The question, then, when it comes to creating a
context for a new fusion effort, is at what level is the fusion
undertaken... what are the technical elements, the cultural
perspective, and how are they combined? Why are they combined? I
think I've commented elsewhere that simply taking a non-European
theme and transposing it into a Western European harmonic &
formal idiom might be one pole. This could, of course, be done in
reverse. And has, for instance, in the Carnatic "Western
note" compositions, although not as commonly, or perhaps I
should say as prominently — I've also heard African drummers
play a wide range of world styles (European and elsewhere) on a
single drum, although it was never explained as such (to the outsider
audience, anyway). Another pole might be taking elements of more
than one tradition and uniting them in a new structural context.
Improvisation can make that easier in some sense, but there are
also formal structures to various improvising styles around the
world, and so simply improvising is far from a guarantee that one
will create a new structural context. It's far too easy &
natural to take new ideas and then fall back on the forms one knows
when expressing them. And that previous sentence uses more general
terms, because it's more generally true, beyond music.

It's not as though all of us have the same personal context,
even if we're from the same nominal culture. We all have different
experiences, hopefully authentic experiences, and creativity
might run in different directions. Large cultural constructs, such
as jazz, grow and shift over time. They're also supported by the
efforts & contributions & elaborations of many amazing
people over many years. So if a few people decide to take a couple
of musical idioms that have had little conscious interaction in the
past, maybe forging a new cross-cultural context will take more
than a couple of sessions. Fair enough. We can ask, though, where
they're coming from and what that context looks to be (becoming).
Is it superficial? Is it layered in social and/or technical meaning,
that is, does it foster new ways of looking at human interaction
or musical materials? We might ask these questions and not know
the answers. One thing seems clear, though, namely that these
efforts need to come deeply from the personal backgrounds of the
people involved, that they shouldn't try to speak for an entire
culture or be received as such. That simple message might be,
paradoxically, one of the defining aspects of jazz.

With that said, some thoughts on three recent releases in this
general category....

From this perspective, not terribly far afield is Route de
Frères by Andrew Cyrille & Haitian Fascination
(on the Tum label). Cyrille (b.1939, New York) has a Haitian
background, and visited there as a child. Now in his 70s, this
project connects with those roots, incorporating musicians from
Haiti and taking on some of the native styles. As a drummer with
Cecil Taylor and others, Cyrille has worked in the avant garde, and
so this program spans the spectrum of straightforward Caribbean
tunes & rhythms to advanced rhythmic & harmonic treatments.
It's a wonder how well those styles come together here, perhaps
illustrating exploration of newer jazz idioms in Haiti itself, and
even individual tracks might move between more & less accessible
music. That said, these traditions obviously share closer histories
than some. Contributions to US jazz from the Caribbean are
long-standing, and the French Colonial connection here is notable.
As some performers are currently looking to reinvigorate themselves
with the roots of US jazz in New Orleans, the Haitian perspective
provides an interesting foil. Scholarship relating Haiti and New
Orleans is far from fully formed, and judging by this music, there
is more to learn than might otherwise be guessed. Although it has
its limits as a fairly singular effort, Route de Frères
shines an interesting & provocative light on the US jazz tradition
and its shared history.

Another interesting album released earlier this year is
Chalaba by the Joachim Kühn Trio. Besides the German
pianist (b.1944), the Trio includes Moroccan vocalist & string
player Majid Bekkas, and Spanish percussionist Ramon Lopez. This
is the third album these performers have done together for ACT
Music, so their interaction is relatively polished. The idea of
Moroccan-Jazz fusion is also not as exotic as might first be imagined.
The relevant touchstone here is the cross-cultural Muslim rule in
medieval Andalucía — rather, I don't know if the
performers themselves conceive their interactions this way, but I
do. There was a concerted effort to eradicate the Andalucían
culture from unified Spain, and so those considered to be the closest
practitioners of that tradition today are in Morocco. Andalucían
music has also had numerous attempts at historical reconstruction
from musicologists in recent years, with
numerous recordings. In
some ways, the more open & triadic melodic style resembles later
European music more closely than the French & Italian styles
from those generations. Whereas I do perceive some interesting
phrase-harmonic kinship, the structure of song & improvisation
are rather different. That said, it would be hard to say that there
is a particular European style of improvisation, e.g. an analog to
bebop in American jazz. Like
Historicity and Tirtha
by Vijay Iyer, this ACT Music album is rather easygoing and open
to the listener. It seems kind of simple over time, which is an
accomplishment of its own, and lends some direct emotional
resonance.

Farther afield, and continuing the trend of including prominent
vocals, is Zâr by the Ensemble Shanbehzadeh & the
Matthieu Donarier Trio on the Buda Musique label (which usually
sticks to more traditional material). This is an Iranian trio
(winds & vocals, two percussionists) combined with a French
jazz trio (sax, electric guitar, drums). Here the Iranian structure
dominates, with the jazz players providing their own interesting
perspective on it. However, this is not an Iranian style with which
I was very familiar. The style is from the South of Iran, specifically
around the city of Bushehr, and the lead instrument of this ensemble
(besides voice) is generally the bagpipe (neyanban). It has something
of the sound & melodic structure that I associate with some
Kurdish music, although there may be no actual connection. The
term Zâr signifies trance music, and that sort of
repetitive droning quality is found here, together with more sudden
shifts & outbursts. I have encountered this style of trance
music explicitly before, including in Iranian music (but also farther
afield), usually associated with the string tanbur. The idea of
having a jazz trio play along is an interesting one, and this is
definitely emotional or even transcendent music.

Where did I learn of these albums? Route de Frères
was featured at Jazz Loft.
Although I did see the release notice for Chalaba from
Allegro, I subsequently sought it out in combination with the current
context and upon encountering Joachim Kühn's playing on the
Ibiza-based release of the previous entry. Zâr was
also in the Allegro new
release flyer, which I've regularly consulted for many years, only
under world music.

Perhaps I should also go back now and reflect on the word
"fusion" in this context. To many jazz fans, fusion means
incorporating musical ideas or technologies from rock music or other
US popular music. It's a very narrow concept of fusion, especially
as jazz started out with fusion between classical music and native
US styles, and rock is basically a different slant on that notion.
It's interesting that combining styles with such close historical
roots could have been controversial, especially as juxtaposed with
broader world fusion which, as far as I can tell, doesn't generate
any particular controversy in jazz. One might also call it
"fusion" to combine jazz with European atonality, which
as noted previously, was being developed contemporaneously with the
mainstream jazz idioms. Maybe mixing cultures seems less threatening
when they're farther apart?

20 October 2011

Another album of very high merit that I had previously overlooked,
this time released in 2009, is
Quadrologues by the quartet
Transit, which was apparently formed by drummer Jeff Arnal. Nate
Wooley is another part of this group, and of course I've made note
of various recordings involving him. I was otherwise unfamiliar
with the saxophone player, Seth Misterka, as well as Arnal. Also
involved is bassist Reuben Radding, who has a more extensive
discography, but doesn't seem to have been involved in anything
released more recently. In fact,
Radding's website hasn't
even been updated to include the Quadrologues release, and
it appears he moved to Seattle (from New York) by the time it
appeared. Arnal has some 7" vinyl releases on
his website but has
apparently not done a full-length album since Quadrologues,
and apparently neither has Misterka.

So it's little wonder I didn't notice this album, since most of
the participants have not been very active since. There's no
question that staying active with recordings is one way to get
people to notice earlier work. On the other hand, waiting until
you have something new that's exciting and you really want to release
can make quite an impression when it's noticed. Quadrologues
is such an album. In fact, even listening to it a couple of times,
I didn't feel much sense as to what was going on... I still don't
know what the starting points for the individual pieces might have
been, whether there's any scripted element at all, or entirely group
improvisation. It's quite a sphinx in that sense, and indeed the
classical-mythological context fits the feel of the album. Comments
on Arnal's playing tend to focus on his work with modern dance, and
that kind of drama does come through in this album, lending it
almost an air of reimagining ancient Greek theater. The starkness
(at times) and dissonance (at times) fit that image, and then the
manipulation of time evokes ancient stories, together with an almost
elemental quality. This comes partly from the structure of
interaction, and partly from the sonorities of the winds, with
Misterka's Middle Eastern shadings and Wooley's "force of
nature" style on the trumpet. I don't imagine dancers per se,
but I do imagine human drama, with a strong sense of ensemble. The
result is a stunning collective statement with a timeless energy,
and keen sense of individuality.

Quadrologues was recorded in December 2006 & January
2007, but the first album by this ensemble, Transit, was
recorded "way back" in March 2001, and only released in
2005. Transit is much easier to grasp than Quadrologues,
and kind of pales in comparison (especially with me hearing the
later album first), but it's interesting to hear this ensemble from
5+ years earlier, and even to hear some of the earlier roots of
ideas that find their way into e.g. Nate Wooley's improvisations
with Pete Robbins or Daniel Levin. Another 5+ years between albums
would suggest that this group should produce one again soon. Let's
hope so.

Another singular & highly interesting Clean Feed release
from 2009 is Udentity by the
Denman Maroney Quintet. (There aren't any other older albums on
Clean Feed that I'm currently pondering writing about, if anyone
wonders.) Denman Maroney
(b.1949) plays what he calls the hyperpiano, which is a piano with
various sorts of preparations, perhaps taken a little beyond what
some of the other performers mentioned here have done with preparations.
That isn't particularly the main feature of Udentity, however,
even if it is indicative of Maroney's influences. Maroney is
confronting much of the US experimental tradition, with not only
prepared piano ideas from Cage, but ideas on undertones &
overtones from Cowell & Partch, ideas on cycle from Harrison,
etc. Uniting these ideas with jazz seems very American, yet hasn't
been attempted that much, or at least not quite in this way.
Udentity is very successful. It seamlessly incorporates
connections between polyrhythmic proportions and harmonic proportions
in a very different way from e.g. Steve
Lehman or Rob Mazurek, who take
more of a top-down approach, taking the idea of undertone construction
(and perhaps even some ideas on sonority) from Partch. Udentity
was recorded in 2008, and unlike the very long gap with Arnal above,
Maroney did a quartet recording (Gaga) in 2006, which lacks
the trumpet. Gaga is also an interesting album, more
understated, and without such an explicit "jazz" feel as
Udentity, which consists of a composed cycle of pieces that
nonetheless rely primarily on group improvisation. Apparently the
style was developed over the course of only a couple of years.

This is probably a good time to discuss some other connections.
Reuben Radding (b.1966) is also the bassist on Udentity,
making for a couple of very impressive (and very different) albums
for him in 2009, with apparently none since. On Udentity,
the bass serves as much as anything to unite the texture with the
winds (including some solos), based around Maroney's harmonic
invocations and rhythmic cycles (accented by
Michael Sarin, unknown
to me otherwise, on drums), whereas on Quadrologues Radding
is providing much of the harmonic context for the very dramatic
interplay of the winds. Another interesting connection is that
Dave Ballou (b.1963), who
plays trumpet on Udentity, and contributes markedly to the
more aggressive sound world on that album, was the trumpeter at the
very beginning of the Daniel Levin Quartet, before being replaced
by Nate Wooley. His website likewise lists no recording later than
this one. Reed player Ned
Rothenberg (b.1956) has apparently turned largely to the
shakuhachi since this project, whereas Denman Maroney himself has
done an album around poetry. These subsequent events make
Udentity seem that much more like an artistic summation.

Looking back at them, both of these albums from the Clean Feed
catalog, although very different in style, seem like monuments
today. Udentity is a polished synthesis of many of the
long-standing experimental elements of the US musical tradition
into the jazz idiom, while Quadrologues is one of the most
original & striking sound worlds yet created in the realm of
collective improvisation. One thing they have in common is that
each of the individual performers really has a chance to shine.
These albums give 2009 a rather different character now than the
year had for me a few months ago.

26 October 2011

I've mentioned some aspects of contemporary classical music in
this space from the start, so I'll go ahead and mention a new
recording that captured my attention. I have not been exploring
much under the classical heading recently, although I do notice
some releases, particularly of music
by Scelsi. My inclination to actually listen to new performances
has been a little lacking the past several years, though. Perhaps
that's prompted by a bit of vanity on my own part, believing that
I already know the music (or just wanting to be frugal). Besides
some recent Scelsi recordings on Mode
Records, one recent series I did follow was the orchestral music
by Xenakis on Timpani, which seems to have concluded at five volumes.
These are particularly well-executed renditions of some of Xenakis'
largest-scale music, including some previously unrecorded items.

This month, the Complete
Cello Works on Aeon caught my eye. (Aeon has also released
some significant medieval recordings, so that's an interesting mix.)
In short, the musicianship by cellist
Arne Deforce (and others)
on this recording is amazing. He's managing dual resonance tones
on the cello, among other things, and making these rather daunting
pieces sound very musical. At times they fit right into current
jazz styles, although still with a bit of a classical edge. I've
heard e.g. Nomos Alpha in at least a few different performances,
and this is the first time I've actually found it engaging. The
concerto-format piece Epicycles (which I've also heard before)
is amazingly lucid as well, with a larger ensemble. There are also
a few pieces here that I hadn't heard before. In short, this
recording comes off as a real landmark. I guess it never occurred
to me that performance practice around Xenakis' music could take
such major steps, although in hindsight it seems obvious. I had
apparently internalized the notion that Xenakis' music is
"impossible to play" and so was accepting of the idea
that performances wouldn't improve. There should be a lot of
interest here to current jazz performers.

Having been so awed by this recording raises the obvious question:
Are there other Xenakis releases that I had ignored that make similar
performance strides? I subsequently listened to the
Complete String Quartets
by the JACK Quartet, and was impressed (and Ergma is a first
recording). Now I realize I need to, once again, redo my Xenakis
listing here, and probably deemphasize the Arditti Quartet recording
that had been, to my mind, the most significant release prior to
the orchestral series (and part of the reason I'm here writing more
about jazz is that I'm more interested in smaller ensembles). This
year marks 20 years since the Arditti Quartet recorded that set
with Claude Helffer, so that's an awfully long run at being the
first recording I'd recommend. In any case, I'm going to explore
some other recent Mode releases, which I had largely ignored, and
restructure that listing soon. I'll note it here when it's done,
and hopefully if there's anything important that I've missed, someone
will let me know. I do definitely feel more engaged with this music
as of this month.

One thing I'm also realizing is that I've taken an easier road
with Scelsi, because I have not set to highlight a handful of
"essential" recordings for someone interested in his
music. Rather, I just have the complete discography and some
historical writeups I did about specific works. It is probably
time to name my favorite Scelsi recordings also, so I'll likewise
be preparing that and note it here. (Most recent addition would
be the viola disc on Mode.)
Then, sigh, I'll have to update it whenever needed.

This leads me back to another obvious activity that I'd been
pondering anyway: I should probably write a structured listing of
my favorite jazz recordings. Besides this rambling collection of
thoughts (and the good thing is that it highlights recent impressions
and interests, without having to revise a document per se), I have
only the flat listing of recordings, in alphabetical order by label,
which isn't terribly informative. What isn't so clear is how I'd
want to structure a listing of favorites, so that is going to take
some more thought.

31 October 2011

As something of an aside, I received a couple of new Criss Cross
releases. In part because of his playing with Tyshawn Sorey, I
wanted to listen to pianist John Escreet's (b.1984) album Exception
to the Rule. The liner notes even mention that it's something
of a departure for Criss Cross, and it features a fair amount of
electronic soundscaping from David Binney, as well as some interesting
metrical structures from Escreet. There are some strong parts,
such as the opening title track, along with some more repetitive
or stereotypical sections.

I was particularly excited to hear Introducing Opus 5,
thinking perhaps it was a move by some prominent Criss Cross artists
toward more of a collective improvisation mindset away from more
staid jazz formats. Instead, it's basically just the opposite,
practically an "easy listening" album (until the last
track, at least) from some performers I've enjoyed elsewhere, and
doesn't even include music composed by Blake or Sipiagin. I guess
I should try to hear the preview tracks online more often.

1 November 2011

In the spirit of 10/20's discussion on fusion music, I've now
had a chance to hear Inana by Amir ElSaffar. As noted, it's
hard to fashion a truly rich combination of musical styles, and I
often enjoy the idea of fusion more than the result. Still, I want
to be as fair and constructive as I can be about these efforts,
because I do think they're worthwhile.

I did not find Inana to be very engaging. The structure
of the program, musical forms, and actual playing most of the time
are straight out of the Middle Eastern tradition. (I won't say
Iraqi specifically, and I don't know ElSaffar's specific background
other than that it's Iraqi, which could mean a variety of cultures.
The narrative of the Suite is taken from Sumerian legend. The
overall structure, as well as the reliance on Rast and
Segah, is more evocative of across the border in Iran, but
that might be irrelevant.) It comes off, primarily, as an album to
acquaint jazz listeners with Middle Eastern music. I cannot really
speak to how well it does that. However, a couple of other things
must be noted. First of all, ElSaffar is very adept at playing the
trumpet with microtonal shadings. He's so good at it, it's understated
and easy to ignore. His technique on trumpet definitely deserves
a listen. Also, there are some times in the program, particularly
in the counterpoint of Infinite Variety that he grapples
more with the Western musical tradition. When he does this, the
ideas are interesting and coherent. I would like to see an entire
album devoted to this style. The other thing to note, I guess, is
that the Western instruments in the ensemble fit rather readily
into the Middle Eastern styles and forms. This is also a credit
to the musicians involved, even if it doesn't make for particularly
thought-provoking music.

3 November 2011

It turns out the cello disc by Arne Deforce did not represent
a huge "tip of the iceberg" performance practice situation
that required radical rethinking of my Xenakis selections (his
recording is simply superb of its own). However, I did revise
my Xenakis page, as promised.
I reordered the listings, made some different comments, added a
supplementary page, and did indeed add a couple of items from Mode's
Xenakis Edition. Neither is revelatory, but both are worth listing
in such a selective listing (currently six items).

In this space, I wanted to further discuss an item I did
not add to the page, the
Percussion Works on 3 CDs.
I had heard most of these works before, some in multiple renditions,
but the idea of collecting them together had a definite appeal, and
in the wake of enjoying so much jazz percussion, I was expecting
to have a new appreciation for Xenakis' percussion works. Although
the liner notes (of course) argue for its stature, and one can
certainly appraise it entirely due to the quantity of his output,
I do not find that Xenakis' mathematical approach discovered much
in the realm of percussion. There starts to be an element of
sophistication in e.g. the late solo work Rebonds, but for
the most part, Xenakis' music is stuck in a linear-scientific concept
of time.

Whereas such a concept serves his explorations well in e.g. music
for strings, with its carefully notated glissandi, it does not
really handle multiple layers of temporal flow, and especially not
the kind of restructuring of time that I find so compelling
in some jazz performances. Xenakis' sense of time remains fundamentally
linear, with polyrhythms resolving themselves into the overall
concept, and pieces ending with points of stasis — uniting
in one flow of time. This is in sharp distinction not only to the
idea of restructuring time (completely outside the Western scientific
concept as well), but to temporal independence, or one might say
the broader independence of human acts & interactions. For as
much as Xenakis sought to go beyond earlier human ideas on sound
& musical expression, to start from scratch and develop sound
from its elements, we see his concept of rhythm (as exemplified so
purely in percussion) hidebound to a singular articulation of time.
Interesting, no?

14 November 2011

Some readers might remember I mentioned exploring flute players
in jazz, and that discussion will likely continue. At a similar
time, I wanted to hear trombone players also. That led me to Swiss
trombonist Samuel Blaser
(b.1981), although I've taken some time to write this entry, largely
because of the pace at which he has been releasing recordings.
Before discussing Blaser's music, I did also want to note that these
two interests spring in part from Henry Threadgill's
2009 release, where both flute &
trombone (and electric guitar & tuba) are featured on some
tracks. Threadgill's sense of ensemble (constitution) is very
impressive, but I digress.

In looking at contemporary trombone leader recordings, and clearly
the trombone has a much deeper history back to the early days of
jazz than the flute, one of the first I encountered was Pieces
of Old Sky (recorded in 2008) from the Clean Feed catalog, by
the Samuel Blaser Quartet. This album, including Tyshawn Sorey
& Thomas Morgan & Todd Neufeld on guitar, is appealing.
It's dominated by the opening title piece, something of a suite,
which starts slowly, and then has some contrasting tracks later.
Without Blaser's more recent material, I might have ended up listing
this album here, but it comes off relatively stiff, particularly
in the way the ensemble interacts, in comparison. The material is
also a little slow-moving at times.

In looking at Blaser's discography, as prompted by the Clean
Feed release, I saw Consort in
Motion before I heard Pieces of Old Sky. Consort
in Motion consists of jazz interpretations, or in some cases
recompositions, of early Italian baroque music. I did not want
to dive into that style of fusion, given the other orientations
here, before hearing Blaser elsewhere, so opted to hear Pieces
of Old Sky first. However, Consort in Motion turns out
to be a superb album. It features music of Monteverdi mostly, but
also a track by Frescobaldi and a couple by Marini (whom I've perhaps
featured disproportionately in my favorites elsewhere). Brass was
an ascendant instrument group at the time, and Blaser's arrangements
are very insightful and satisfying, oriented strongly around his
trombone playing. Consort in Motion is a more thoroughly
satisfying album than I expected, and I'm kind of amused by Blaser's
remark that it was more effort than he anticipated, or even that
he didn't think of combining his interest in early music with jazz
before being prompted. (I'll just note, tangentially, that I've
been agitating for some Ars Subtilior improvisatory fusion
for years.) Consort in Motion is not a very challenging
album, concentrating on tunes, but it's not totally straightforward
either. Dodecaphonic piano riffs spun off 400 year-old tunes is a
welcome juxtaposition for me, for instance. It comes off as very
polished.

After Consort in Motion, both from 2011, comes
Boundless. Boundless
is not early music fusion, nor does it have the more regimented
structure of Pieces of Old Sky. Rather this is an inspired
group improvisation album, recorded on a European tour. Gerald
Cleaver (b.1963) has appeared on many interesting albums, but this
is the second I've included here (after
Spiritual Lover), and his
percussion always adds interesting insight & accent. Here the
guitarist is Marc Ducret, also mentioned previously, and the bass
player is Bänz Oester. Oester was previously unknown to me,
but adds tangibly to the album with some innovative bass lines, and
also completes a 3-part Swiss slant to the production, with Blaser
and the Hat Hut label itself. If I understand the discussion
correctly, the material on Boundless began as different
compositions, but eventually fused into a general suite with unclear
boundaries. The track markers don't seem to mean much, although
if I have a criticism, it's that the music is too episodic, with
different players or combinations dominating for long periods.
Regardless, Boundless is very engaging and supports repeat
hearings, with a great balance between material and improvisation,
and a superbly tuned-in group interaction. This is a significant
development over Blaser's debut album, 7th Heaven (recorded
in 2006), which shows impressive trombone technique and not much
else. It's good I didn't hear that album first, because I did not
get much out of it. It's amazing how far his conception has come
in only a few years.

Another thing to note, I suppose, is that so far I've only found
one trombone leader putting out material that truly appeals. Although
there are other good players out there, such as Ray Anderson on the
recent The Other Parade (an album with good points, but too
much about soloing in turn), and of course the long history of
trombone out of New Orleans, I haven't found too much of deep
personal resonance. In some ways, whereas the trombone's ability
to slide notes is a great strength, it requires a legato emphasis
that doesn't necessarily mix readily with contemporary jazz styles
(and apparently suggests electronic manipulations to many players).
This issue is solved by Blaser (and Threadgill) by the way contrasting
instruments are deployed, retaining an analog emphasis. In any
event, the only thing that prevents me from being even more
enthusiastic about Boundless, other than the linear-episodic
temporal format, is the sense that more will soon follow, and indeed
another release on Hat Hut is announced explicitly for the next few
months. I was already waiting to hear Boundless before
writing this entry, so it's time to stop waiting and get this
written, even if Blaser's music is evolving fast.

I'm not feeling anything else I really want to share here right
now, other than to note that it's done.

21 November 2011

Some more comments while I ponder how I want to do a "Best
of 2011" writeup here....

The latest from Jason Adasiewicz's trio (called "Sun
Rooms" after their first album) is Spacer, recorded in
May this year. I discussed Sun Rooms in June. The basic
summary is, although I find Adasiewicz's style on the vibraphone
to be creative & interesting, there wasn't a huge amount of
material on the album. Spacer is a bit longer, and features
all original material, so that aspect has been answered to an extent.
Still, while I find the vibraphone playing interesting — and
it continues to be creative, with some new ornament styles, some
evocative of East Asian music, presumably done with hand damping
— the overall resources of the trio don't provide enough
action for me. The music is pleasant, but not compelling. Maybe
that's my own failure, but whereas the basic idea of a vibraphone
trio with bass & drums is appealing in its way, the vibes just
don't have the capacity of a piano or guitar (prove me wrong), and
the combination feels lacking. Although their album is also fairly
straightforward — and I'll say more on this later —
the Starlicker Trio with Rob
Mazurek on cornet comes together better for me.

Continuing to explore some combinations in this sound world led
me in part to trumpeter Darren Johnston's new album, The Big
Lift. Johnston is a Bay Area musician, so local to me, and
this album finds him playing with musicians in Chicago, including
Adasiewicz & Nate McBride from Sun Rooms. The Chicago style
in the rhythm section is quite evident, and it combines nicely with
Johnston's style on trumpet, as well as trombone and drums. This
album definitely has appealing moments, and projects a continued
sense of searching from these musicians in developing a new style.
Frankly, I'm a little confused how San Francisco has practically
become a suburb of Chicago in jazz terms, but unfortunately there
isn't enough support for creative jazz musicians here. I first
noticed Johnston in the Clean Feed catalog.

6 December 2011

A recent release to catch my attention was Sketches &
Ballads, a single 36 minute composition & improvisatory
framework written by Swiss drummer
Michael Wertmüller
(b.1969) and appearing on the Austrian label Trost. The musicians
are centered around the Full Blast trio which features legendary
German reed player Peter Brötzmann together with Wertmüller
and Marino Pliakas on electric bass. Joining them for this live
recording at the Donaueschingen Musiktage in 2010 are renowned
Chicago reed improviser Ken Vandermark, German quarter-tone trumpet
player Thomas Heberer (featured in this space in September), and
timpani player Dirk Rothbrust. This is a particularly formidable
lineup of wind improvisers, which attracted me to the recording
(which I saw first listed at Jazz Loft). Wertmüller's composition
is at times very frenetic, but also leaves large spaces for open
soloing by the winds. It's a high energy performance as per the
reputation of Brötzmann and Full Blast, but also features
extended lighter passages. Indeed, one can hear the rhythmic scheme
create this extended space in a technical way.

Wertmüller's recent recordings revolve around Full Blast,
but also with German guitarist Olaf
Rupp. The two recent releases by those two performers, the
second including Pliakas, are The Specter of Genius &
Too Much is not Enough, both from 2009. Wertmüller's
style is perhaps more immediately apparent in these recordings,
with their many shorter tracks and usual density. Rupp describes
his style as a form of sonic pointillism, with dense individual
notes creating an image of something behind the literal music.
Likewise, Wertmüller's composition technique involves computer
notation of very detailed rhythms which are basically the impression
of an underlying music object. Sketches & Ballads is
notated at times to 256th notes, and was tentatively subtitled as
being in "equal-tempered time," an apt turn of phrase for
approximating by powers of two. In keeping with this sense of time,
and the actual sound representing something behind it, Wertmüller
also performs e.g. the mathematical percussion music of Xenakis.
Although with a definite German slant, Sketches & Ballads
comes off firmly as a jazz record through the sounds of its wind
improvisers. If anything, one wishes for a middle ground between
the wide open spaces they're given at times, and the intense &
detailed sonic activity with Rupp. In any case, there is no doubt
that Wertmüller is creating a distinctive musical vision.

12 December 2011

In keeping with a recent theme of German-speaking performers,
and following up on my admiration for
Polylemma expressed in
September, I've had a chance to hear the piano trio Tørn's
album Crespect, also featuring
drummer Joe Hertenstein. I did not know this recording existed
until Joe pointed it out to me in response to my earlier discussion
of Polylemma. It's been available for download for a while,
and I'm told there will be a stock of physical copies in the US
soon at Downtown Music
Gallery. In any case, Crespect was recorded sometime
in 2009, a year or so prior to Polylemma, but after HNH,
and includes Austrians Achim
Tang (b.1958) on bass and Philip
Zoubek (b.1978) on piano. Although Polylemma creates a
more strikingly original sound world, Crespect (which is
also one of the compositions on Polylemma) tackles the classic
piano trio format in a both creative & immediately appealing
way.

With its use of atonal techniques, and the way it balances
creative contributions from drums & bass, Crespect reminds
me a lot of Kris Davis's Good
Citizen, one of my favorites (also recorded in 2009). In
fact, Tørn's concluding treatment of Carla Bley's 1964 classic
And Now, the Queen is so evocative of Kris Davis's trio in
Skinner Box, that I've reflexively expected to hear the
chirpy opening tune to Davis's B Side at the end of
Crespect. Another comparison might be with Ingrid Laubrock's
Anti-House, because of the shorter, more gestural items
interspersed with more substantive tracks (although many albums do
nominally that). On Crespect, this is also where we hear
more of the extended techniques, such as balancing muted piano
preparations (with bowing?) against brushes on the drums. Like
Polylemma, there's a definite sense of blending & shifting
of role that I find appealing. This fits with the semantic,
conversational quality of the music which readily engages me in the
performers' musical ideas. That sort of conversational engagement
is clearly one thread running through the albums that have attracted
my continued attention. Altogether, this is a stimulating release,
not quite like anything else despite some notable similarities, and
music I've found readily enjoyable.

Bassist Pascal Niggenkemper from Polylemma also released
a piano trio this year, on the Lithuanian No Business label,
Upcoming Hurricane featuring Simon Nabatov & Gerald
Cleaver. This is a more freely improvisatory album, with an often
ferocious performance by Nabatov spurred by Niggenkemper and accented
by Cleaver. I've actually enjoyed more of Nabatov's playing here
than in his own albums from this year. Although Niggenkemper has
his share of solos, the roles on this album seem fairly static.
The title does fit well.

This is also an opportunity to mention that I've created a
favorites list to index the recordings I
particularly enjoy, by year of release, instead of sticking with
the old alphabetical listing. I've also decided what I'm going to
do about looking back at the year 2011: Instead of writing something
else to discuss my favorite releases of 2011, I'm going to write
additional discussions of only a few. These are not necessarily
my very favorites, but rather releases from earlier in the year
where I believe I have something new & concrete to discuss now.
Hopefully that will be more worthwhile.

14 December 2011

I've already mentioned a desire to say more about Rob Mazurek's
Double Demon album, and so
I'll start from there in a series of remarks about some releases
from earlier in 2011.

Although I have no direct knowledge of Mazurek's inspiration(s)
surrounding the album, I do know he was excited by the new sound
and proceeded to perform urgently with this trio before recording.
The obvious touchstone for me is Steve Lehman's octet album
Travail, Transformation, and Flow.
Not only is the vibraphone sound prominent in both, but the way
overtones are matched between instruments is similar. In Lehman's
case, this is explicitly about spectral music, and timbral
relationships, although practically speaking it involves matching
overtone series and decay between instruments, and letting that
drive much of the music. Mazurek likewise takes the "top
down" approach to structure in Double Demon. Both of
these albums basically turn jazz on its head, in terms of not only
not following a bass line, but dictating it from the upper ranges.

Travail, Transformation, and Flow often has a pensive
quality, in part because of the size of the ensemble. I don't know
what Steve Lehman and/or Pi Recordings mean by "fully
realized" as a qualification on spectral music, but Lehman's
music does have a broad series of overtone interactions between the
instruments, including intricate combinations in the middle ranges.
The music could be represented as a "tree" structure with
more branches coming from more combinations down through the pitch
scale (as opposed to upward from the bass). Double Demon
is a trio so doesn't have as many branches, but keeps the same top
down approach. (A trio contains 3 pairs; an octet contains 28
possible pairs, combinatorially.) In this case, Mazurek's music
calls for a more aggressive drummer with more rock influences. In
Lehman's music, the "rhythm section" (so to speak) is
fairly diffuse with all the branching, and the drummer (Tyshawn
Sorey) is consequently dealing with a lot of threads.

That said, and Lehman's album still stands as something of a
monument in terms of (lack of) followup efforts, Double Demon
is much more direct in illustrating some similar musical ideas. It
has a strong sweep, and also builds on a sense of time &
especially ensemble based upon overtone/timbral combinations and
decay. Mazurek has really trimmed things down to the key elements
in that sense, while also keeping a very personal style, including
some Brazilian influences in the melodies. It's a very "clean"
album in terms of conception. (And I should note that Lehman's last
track has a simplicity to it as well, but of a different sort.)

One possible flipside of these explorations is Denman Maroney's
work with "undertone" series, summarized in
Udentity. There we hear
overtone series combinations based on additive math below the bass,
in what is additionally a system of rhythmic layering. Whereas
Mazurek is effectively letting the top line dictate much of the
music under it in Double Demon, Udentity uses an
implied sub-bass to structure the music above it. In that sense,
it can be heard as an intensification of jazz driven by a bass line,
to the point that rhythm is driven as well. Although Lehman &
Sorey do present credible ideas on a drum line being driven by
timbral interactions above it, Mazurek often lets his drummer (John
Herndon) simply double his cornet phrasing, leaving the question
of actually driving a rhythmic sequence from high-note timbral
interactions for another day.

20 December 2011

The featured release for Clean Feed in their end-of-year batch
is Frog Leg Logic by Marty Ehrlich's Rites Quartet. There
is some good material, and I definitely like the high-energy opening
title track. Some of the material doesn't really do a lot for me,
though, and this is a release with all of Ehrlich's own music, as
opposed to his previous Things Have Got To Change album
which featured Julius Hemphill compositions. These are fine
musicians, though, with interesting personal styles. I was
particularly taken by Hank
Roberts (b.1954) on cello, and the variety of sounds &
styles he plays on the album; it's not just novelty, but techniques
based on a variety of world string styles. Michael Sarin, who I
otherwise know from some great work with Denman Maroney, is also
good on drums. Ehrlich
(b.1955) and the trumpeter, James Zollar, are also excellent horn
players with their own styles. I am probably being overly critical
in comparison with the very original albums coming out in the same
batch of releases, particularly comparing to some of the older
albums I still have listed on my favorites, perhaps because of
inertia, because I do enjoy the sound of this quartet. I'm just
not feeling like most of the songs are speaking to me. For an album
dealing mainly with traditional jazz forms, that seems important.

Holiday traveling and family activities have me backed up a
little on writing here, so some other material will be appearing
very soon, including more detailed discussions of
Fremdenzimmer &
Bird Dies from the same batch
of Clean Feed releases.

27 December 2011

Although it's very original, even radical,
Bird Dies is actually a fairly
easy album to discuss. As a first impression at least, it's hard
on the ears, but ultimately straightforward to analyze. That said,
this is my own impression, and I don't have any actual statements
from the performers or anyone else to indicate that I'm hearing it
the way they're conceiving it. The challenge in discussing Bird
Dies at the moment is more that I haven't completed a discussion
of Morton Feldman's music yet. After being asked to write such a
discussion 20 years ago, that will finally happen (after I have
time to audition more of the available recordings). I had remarked
in this space earlier that I wasn't finding the slow & quiet
of Feldman very compatible with my life today, but I'm going to
have to retract that. In any case, "slow & quiet"
is certainly not an issue for Bird Dies, and I'll be alluding
to a not-quite-written discussion of Feldman by way of comparison
on other significant points.

The trio on Bird Dies, consisting of French alto sax
player Jean Luc Guionnet
(b.1966) and Australians Will
Guthrie & Clayton Thomas on drums &amp bass, calls itself
The Ames Room. I knew nothing of any of these performers prior to
hearing this release, although apparently they released an LP in
2009 (and what is the point of these LP-only releases?). I also
did not know the term Ames Room before this, although I'd seen them,
as well as related effects. You can easily find the description
yourself, but the main point is that it involves tricking the visual
sense via three-dimensional structural distortions. The three-dimensional
aspect is significant here, and I think very significant to Feldman
as well. Although his carpet analogies have something of a 2d
suggestion to them, the third dimension is very important to this
conception, with aspects of sound moving to the foreground or
background as part of the way the basic sonic figure changes.
Feldman's achievement in this area goes beyond varying harmonic or
rhythmic patterns over a long span. He manages to make each statement
of the basic sonic figure in his mature music seem temporally
independent — the so-called "floating" idea one
sometimes finds in descriptions of Feldman's music. This is
accomplished technically with frequent changes in time signature.
The basic effect then is of a sonic figure slowly varying with time,
with each statement seeming independent. The figure changes in the
way its intervals are arranged, the way its rhythms are arranged,
or in attack & articulation between instruments. The latter
has a strong effect on the feeling of a 3d figure, in the way that
articulation by different instruments might be simultaneous or one
right before the other or vice versa, etc. This feature also creates
timbral variation in the composite sound.

So with that orientation, the music in Bird Dies —
which is one long track without pauses — fits exactly this
description. I said nothing about slow or quiet in the previous
paragraph, as would also fit Feldman's sonic figures. In the case
of The Ames Room, they are fast and loud: Pounding drums, screeching
saxophone, bass... varying a figure in exactly this way, rapidly.
This sort of thing requires great precision, and so doing it at
speed is obviously a challenge, one which the trio passes admirably.
The idea of varying a sonic figure would also seem to fit into the
realm of jazz very well, from the moment Feldman put together his
mature style. After all, he was not really doing it systematically,
but with a bit of a capricious character and a refusal to stick
with perfect symmetries. Improvisation fits this idea exactly
— one can think of Feldman's late works as written-out
improvisations, in sort of the opposite way that Scelsi's are.
Altogether, Bird Dies creates something of a canonical
impression, with the sonorities of a jazz saxophone trio. As opposed
to some other recent releases featured here, Bird Dies
expresses a non-semantic music, also in the sense originating with
Feldman (meaning, in part, that it doesn't go anywhere in particular,
e.g. no harmonic or rhythmic resolution). Where does one go from
something canonical like this? Obviously Feldman continued with
his style, using different sonic figures, largely determined by
his choice of instruments. That's not something a group of performers
can do so readily, so we'll see. (I see upon editing this piece
and adding links that they term the style minimalist-maximalist,
which makes sense, and doesn't explicitly wed them to non-semantic
music.)

Bird Dies makes a relentless impression, in some ways
analogous to Michael Wertmüller's work as discussed a couple
of weeks ago, but in a fundamentally different way, since it's not
trying to indicate anything beyond the sonic surface itself. Another
obvious point of comparison is classic avant garde jazz performers
who put out similarly energetic single-track albums, such as Cecil
Taylor and Muhal Richard Abrams. One thing about Taylor and Abrams
is they keep a constant pulse; indeed it's an impressive technical
aspect of their musicianship. However, it gives their music a
two-dimensional character, in the sense I described earlier, whereas
Feldman and The Ames Room are very consciously setting their evolving
sonic forms in different time streams. Thinking of a modern/postmodern
dynamic, one natural question is whether this style can develop a
semantic component over time, or if that's even necessary or
desirable. The title is surely a denial of the bebop language,
invoking this anti-semantic stance. For the moment, it's a rather
distinctive & original direction.

29 December 2011

I've had it on my mind to revisit the Daniel Levin Quartet's
Organic Modernism album for a
while now. It's the earliest release on my 2011
favorites listing, so this discussion is a perfect way to recap
the year. My delay isn't about a lack of things to say about
Organic Modernism, but rather a lot more to say about the
title itself and its implications in aesthetics & philosophy.
These implications are clearly tied up in Levin's choice of title,
and also in significant aspects of his ensemble approach, but they're
also part of broader trends, both as representative of 2011 and as
a genre-crossing thread in & out of the past several decades.
I don't know what to make of Art Lange's choice to consult a
dictionary over aesthetics & history in his liner notes, but I
do know there's quite a bit more to say about this topic.

The term "organic modernism" itself first appears in
architecture, at least by the 1950s, and already partly in a
retroactive sense. It continues to exist most prominently today
in the realm of furniture, and one finds both of these associations
clearly on the Daniel Levin Quartet's album — obliquely with
the cover, and explicitly in the track Furniture as Sculpture.
Note that the cover already substitutes a more 21st century
architectural conception for the 1950s style, with its use of
greenery, roots, corncob, etc. This is our current concept of
organic out of the Green movement and environmentalism, something
that's obviously going to have major implications on architectural
trends. Coopting this older term for a newer style seems justified
simply by how well it fits, although it invites confusion. Where
it does reflect a similar process is in the continuing tension
between modernism & postmodernism.

Let me back up on this point, and try to bring the music explicitly
into this discussion. A major impetus of postmodernism is in
deconstruction, not only in a refusal to follow tradition for the
sake of tradition, but in a deep questioning of the power structures
of existing social relations. One must essentially sweep history
aside in order to remove inherited inequity, yet any naïve
dismissal of history easily affirms some of its more insidious
aspects. So deconstruction requires very careful & close
examination of all the threads involved in a particular expression.
Now I need to fast forward a bit on this point. The Daniel Levin
Quartet is not rethinking and deconstructing everything about music.
In particular, they are not addressing (to my knowledge) its social
context at all. Theirs is music of a traditional concert format...
I don't mean traditional music, but a traditional concert... the
standard conception of musician & audience... stage, timing,
etc. This brings with it tremendous historical baggage, but on to
the fast forward.... Daniel Levin has deconstructed the traditional
jazz ensemble, started with a new & original group of instruments,
and let them evolve their own sound organically... organic
modernism.

Modernism is tied to ideas from science, ideas about solving
problems. It's a basic statement in art about creating something
that fits specific criteria. So in Organic Modernism, one
finds a group of performers who have deconstructed the jazz ensemble
in order to reform it organically and fit into a modernist problem
of the concert stage. E.g. Xenakis was engaged in a similar program,
as far as that goes. He threw out (some) traditional structures
of music, and investigated melody & harmony & rhythm
mathematically, in an attempt to create sound structures outside
of the realm of human tradition. (This sort of attempt to remove
human whim from the field of music composition was representative
of its time, with various composers — most canonically, Cage
— adopting techniques or randomness, etc.) Of course, this
sort of removal of self is easier said than done, and I've already
discussed Xenakis' scientific-linear concept of time, which is very
human. We can go on to describe Xenakis' late "intuitive"
music as a reconstruction of musical style around these new
experimentally derived structures — of course, with an explicit
human element in his choices as the composer. This is, in part,
why Xenakis is ultimately & emphatically a modernist. The
Daniel Levin Quartet is performing this kind of act quite explicitly
with the injection of themselves into the act of performance &
improvisation. In fact, that they project a strongly human element
is one of their principle strengths as performers.

Organic Modernism is their sixth album, developed over
eight or so years, and so presents something of the "results"
of experimentation with sound & ensemble interaction. This impression,
at least as a preconception, is intensified as Organic Modernism
is a studio album following two previous live albums. With
Live at Roulette (recorded in
2008), the quartet documents a fully improvised concert, taking
another step from the material Levin had written, although
Bacalhau (2009, and featuring
a really fine live & spontaneous synthesis with the audience)
is again mostly based on written material. Organic Modernism
(2010) is about half & half. I heard Organic Modernism
first, so this is a very retroactive impression, but I come away
feeling as though there could have been a greater development of
style over these two previous live albums. I still enjoy it,
obviously enough to have sought out much of Levin's other work, as
well as to write this long discussion almost a year later, but it
seems a bit stylistically stagnant. Levin has also been recording
with various other performers since Organic Modernism appeared,
and perhaps that's related. There's a sense that even in their
most improvised moments, the quartet is still very much tied to the
gestures of New York City jazz — for better or worse —
that postmodern deconstruction was never really completed before a
re-synthesis started. Actually, I should temper that comment quite
a bit, because there is clearly some development of style to
Organic Modernism. I'm probably just impatient, and would
like to hear take-offs on their more adventurous moments. Also,
rereading these paragraphs, I find I can't shake the notion of
holding these performers personally responsible for such an ambitious
title! Clearly that is unfair.

To return to the implications of the title, both in this album
and beyond, in a sense, organic music is fusion music. It's reacting
to everything around oneself, not following a particular style a
priori. Organic Modernism contains another directly relevant
track title Kaleidoscope, which is an analogy
I used in the late 1990s to
discuss multi-style synthesis. The implication is a structural
integration of differing styles, each retaining its individual
brilliance, as opposed to a mixture (no unalloyed individual style)
or collage (no structure — and the standard postmodern visual
analogy). That's a particular vision of post-postmodernism, which
in turn is modernist — system building & form. In any
case, a basic question around the postmodern aspect (step?) in this
is whether history or form have truly been discarded, or to what
extent. Discarding the past leaves us open to new kinds of
consciousness & creation, ideally hearing anew. Various musicians
have attempted various ways to discard history & form, followed
by various kinds of re-coalescence, which essentially invoke a
postmodernist-modernist dynamic. Discarding is a mild term, and
so one might reasonably express blasting history away, an idea
particularly relevant in the social arena. Aligned with the Green
movement "organic modernism" suggests system-building to
use the world's resources in an intelligent way, not "because
that's how we've been doing it." Improvised music, likewise,
deals with that same basic problem — even when adopting
postmodern ideas. Those ideas, and I think perhaps it is inadvisable
to use the term "postmodern techniques," are available
building blocks for a modernist system. Once established, they
are available that way, regardless of anyone's preferences,
and can be used. This leads to the same sort of "where do we
go from here?" questions that I asked just now in the discussion
of Bird Dies. That's the modernist-postmodernist tension
of Organic Modernism, in this case with a modern surface
& title; in that case, postmodern.

29 December 2011

The other recent Clean Feed release I want to discuss is
Fremdenzimmer by the trio
Baloni. Baloni includes bassist Pascal Niggenkemper and bass
clarinetist Joachim Badenhorst (here also on clarinet & tenor
sax) from Polylemma, obviously
a very influential album for me, as well as new-to-me
Frantz Loriot on viola.
Fremdenzimmer is a compelling & distinctive album. It
makes a striking first impression, and ends up creating its own
sound world that continues to be evocative — and even
transcendental — upon more acquaintance. Ultimately this
album is very surprising to me. Although Niggenkemper &
Badenhorst have already appeared on a release of great interest,
as well as various other quality projects, the latter have been
more traditionally jazzy (or rock, or...), whereas Fremdenzimmer
is something remarkably new. Perhaps that is because of Loriot,
and I do not know the impetus for forming this trio, if any of these
performers was more personally behind it, etc.

My original impression of Fremdenzimmer was that it has
a definite Scelsi-esque quality, one that really jumps out in fact
from the opening track. This impression was readily confirmed upon
reading the liner notes, which include a poetic line by Scelsi in
a broadly poetic discussion by Jean Jacques Triby. That this is
not really Scelsi's sound world emerges particularly with repeated
hearings, to where some sections do sound alien to his conception
— and I'll translate Fremdenzimmer as Alien Room. This
style of music — no drumkit, a trio with everyone emphasizing
melody, or what passes for melody — strains association with
jazz. That's not a statement about its merit, certainly, but it
does leave me questioning what — if any — boundaries I
have for this particular space. That said, clearly Fremdenzimmer
remains inside them, because here it is.

As opposed to The Ames Room, the Alien Room is not about the
structural distortion of three-dimensional space. It's more about
something in the atmosphere, perhaps a strange fog that creates a
new sense of touch and induces refraction. It brings up fear &
disquiet says Triby. That's not my impression, but it does project
a sense of emergent time, and so one can ask, emergent from where?
A scary place? Is it something for which the listener is prepared?
For Scelsi, such a thing was a liminal message from another realm...
with that same free-flowing, emergent sense of time. Besides the
sense of time, the most immediately Scelsian aspect of the music
is the way the instruments unite seemingly into one sound or one
voice, and of course the way they slur pitch. However, whereas
Scelsi's music has a sort of relentless unity in that sense, so
that even when it goes beyond a single pitch, even an orchestra
often sounds like one large alien voice, Baloni come into and out
of a unity of sound. It's when they are in conversation that they're
at their least Scelsian. I should also add that unity of sound
isn't always about a continuous sound, although that's specifically
evocative of Scelsi. It can work with discrete or rhythmic sounds
too, when the instruments are doing (in some sense) the same thing,
and I believe an emergent sense of time can be taken from e.g.
Het Kruipt In Je Oren, although there the comparison with
Sciarrino in the liner notes seems most appropriate, with the more
discrete sonorities. Although the comparison with Sciarrino is apt
in sonority, his music has a much stricter sense of time, something
inside which the music operates and not just floating out there
waiting to be revealed.

Whereas Bird Dies has
something of a singular quality, Fremdenzimmer is a(nother)
world of possibilities. How does it create this "emergent"
sense of time? Slowly changing pitches and coming into & out
of a unity of sound are two big factors, but there is also the
fundamental unmeasured quality of the music and the performers
listening closely to each other, as they spontaneously create a
sense of time from the pitch materials of a piece. As with Scelsi's
music, that sort of spontaneity can be very powerful, where a
rhythmic structure seems to emerge suddenly out of undifferentiated
fog. That's how this music develops its transcendent quality as
well... listening from one perspective and suddenly finding oneself
somewhere else. The different tracks on the album build nicely in
this sense, not so much that they take a linear journey, but rather
in the different sound worlds they create and the different mental
shifts they invoke. Disorientation is a reason some listeners are
made uncomfortable, even physically so, by Scelsi's music, and there
the disorientation arises mainly from one main pitch transforming
into another. Fremdenzimmer has a sense of drama in that
sense, both in its organization of time and in its varying of pitch
relationships between tracks, so that the disorientation comes at
the listener from different directions. I hear a lot of potential
in this style, both in sonic terms and in the way it serves to
undermine mental rigidity. With more familiarity, there is some
comfort there, which I don't take to be a comfort in madness (cf.
The Madness of Crowds), but
rather a legitimization of different modes of thought.

3 January 2012

Ending the previous entry with a mention of Ingrid Laubrock's
The Madness of Crowds makes a
natural touchstone for the next pair of recordings I want to discuss.
In retrospect, it would have been obvious to listen to In Just,
by the DuH quartet formed by German drummer
Martin Blume, as it was
released on Red Toucan records at the same time as
Polylemma, but I did not do
that originally, since I didn't really know the performers.
Subsequently, in hearing Crespect,
I checked out the other performers in the trio Tørn elsewhere,
and it turns out pianist Philip Zoubek plays with Blume &
Frank Gratkowski in the
quintet Shift, including on Songs from Aipotu, released this
year by Leo Records. I subsequently sought out In Just,
which also includes Hungarian string players Albert Márkos
(cello) and Szilárd
Mezei (viola, b.1974).

With that framing out of the way, Songs from Aipotu evokes
a soundworld fairly reminiscent of The Madness of Crowds,
although Songs from Aipotu opens with a nearly 40-minute
track called Introduction, and is much less distinct in its
sections, even meandering (with lots of electronics at times). It's
enjoyable enough music, if a bit slow- or monolithically developing
in spots (even when loud), and prompted an interest in In Just.
Although released in 2011, Songs from Aipotu was recorded
in 2008 & 2009. In Just
was recorded in one session in May 2010, and is more focused. It's
also an improvised first concert of a group that has subsequently
toured, so a later recording would be of interest. The entire
ensemble takes on a percussive character at times, between Blume
using alternate percussion, plucking from the strings, and even a
percussive aspect to the short reed sounds. Indeed the chirps &
squeaks & pops of the electronic keyboard in Songs from
Aipotu seem to be reflected to a degree on In Just, but
with acoustic instruments.

One could easily ask why I'm more struck by similar sounds coming
from acoustic instruments, or perhaps even more to the point, why
I'm more struck by a more focused set of sounds than a broader
canvas with more activity. On the latter, sometimes more activity
simply doesn't add anything to the musical flow or logic... it's
just more activity. I'm attracted to more succinct expression, one
might say, not just in terms of duration, but in terms of resources.
If more resources are going to be involved, I want to hear a
compelling reason. And let's face it, the recording medium has
audio limits in this regard, in terms of shifting the focus of one's
ear between different instruments and in terms of spatial layout,
etc. So there is partly a matter of personal preference at play
here, and partly a matter of technology. I also tend to prefer a
variety of tracks: Particularly for improvisatory music, more
starting places mean more directions and a greater span of illumination
for the concepts of the album. There are exceptions, of course,
where a particular long track is the perfect exposition of a style.
As far as an acoustic preference, if one is using an electronic
keyboard that will make literally any sound there is, that's a
rather large increase in resources, and similar logic can apply.
And likewise, sometimes electronics simply work perfectly.

So that's a fairly broad explanation of why I find In Just
more appealing than Songs from Aipotu. In Just is a
fully improvised album showing very close listening between the
performers, as in Fremdenzimmer.
The result is an almost ephemeral interplay of ideas, often built
around pizzicato with a lot of space and quiet. The music is
coloristic, atomistic; it's not built around an extended interplay
of sentences, but more of a pointillist canvas. Very short musical
ideas pass very quickly between the players. The resulting sounds
& textures are quite interesting, and the music does yield to
some sense of direction. It's a bit like a classic reed-bass-drum
trio, but with an expanded string part on viola & cello instead
of bass, and all players often in the same register. Gratkowski
is a well-known reed player, with many albums often in a more
straightforward free improvisation mode. I knew absolutely nothing
of Mezei prior to this, but it turns out he also has a large number
of albums, most in a more "classical" setting performing
his compositions, which often revolve around folk song. It's
difficult to imagine anything more opposite here, but Mezei is (I
think! as all the performers are using rather similar sounds at
times) the player most often grabbing my attention. Blume is noted
for his coloristic drumming, but there's also a definite organizational
sense at play in this album. Finally, one aspect of Polylemma
deserves reiteration at this point, in contrast to In Just.
As opposed to some of these other European ensembles I've been
discussing lately, Polylemma includes a distinct (although
not persistent) New York jazz feel. That element of crossover is
definitely one of its charms, whereas In Just is more novel
and doesn't necessarily suggest a broader area of development.

6 January 2012

I'm excited to have had the opportunity to interview drummer Joe
Hertenstein, and the transcript is now available
to read here. The interview includes specific details about
his albums and background, as well as more general thoughts about
music & art.

17 January 2012

Waiting until I have some more substantive thoughts ready to
articulate here, I do have some brief thoughts on a couple of recent
releases on the Motéma label. (This was the same label on
which I had enjoyed Ryan Cohen's Another
Look when I first started this page.)

Anyway, The 11th Gate features a trombone-organ-drums
trio led by English trombonist Dennis Rollins (b.1964). That's not
a combination I might have ordinarily sought, but Rollins mixes an
R&B & groove orientation with a more sophisticated conception,
particularly citing trombone trios formed by Ray Anderson and Nils
Wogram in the notes. The result is a studio recording, with young
English musicians, that mixes accessibility with a nicely layered
polyrhythmic character. It doesn't fit terribly well with the sort
of music I've been discussing lately, but it's enjoyable &
fresh, and worth a listen if any of this sounds appealing.

Also recently appearing is Threedom, with Jean-Michel
Pilc, François Moutin, and Ari Hoenig. I've enjoyed Hoenig's
music, and his drumming is appealing on this mostly improvised album
recorded in March 2011. There are also a handful of standards in
the 18 tracks here. It's an interesting album in the sense of a
long-time trio getting back together and pushing each other in a
mostly impromptu session. I find Pilc simply too lyrical at times
(I guess that would be the positive way to put it) to sustain a lot
of interest for the whole program. Of course, doing something
really new & interesting in the piano trio format is no easy
matter, and this is more of an "update" than a new
conception.

30 January 2012

In my interview with Joe Hertenstein,
Joe brought Polylemma winning
Stef
Gijssel's Happy New Ears Award to my attention. I'm not sure
what the difference between this and a Record of the Year is, which
Stef seems to treat differently, but in any case, there's an
intriguing list of recordings there. (And Stef has other worthwhile
comments in his reviews at his site. Not too many people do,
alas!)

The runner-up album for 2011 is White
Sickness by the Italian quartet Scoolptures, and this is
quite a thought-provoking album. The basic musical material was
developed over three years, based on research by bassist
Nicola Negrini (b.1967), and
worked out in an improvisational context by the quartet. This album
was actually recorded in the same two-day April 2009 session as
Scoolptures' first album, Materiale Umano. Although the
albums share the same sound world and important elements of musical
vocabulary, White Sickness has the greater structural
sophistication. It's difficult to imagine a sequel coming out of
the same recording sessions that could be more compelling than the
original release, but that's exactly the case here. Upon initially
hearing White Sickness, prompted by the New Ears list, I
found it rather fascinating, and so immediately ordered Materiale
Umano. I subsequently held off listening again until I could
hear Materiale Umano a number of times, and the two in
sequence. With its notable, electronics-based creativity in harmony
& timbre, Materiale Umano retains a basically routine
structure — call it sentence & paragraph — with
repeated lines. The different tracks are named after body parts,
with the word "slice" appended (although I do not know
what body parts are referred to in all cases, and these are not
necessarily literal physical parts), and tend to produce a rather
direct & unified mood. My favorite track is the opening
Brainslice (probably suggesting that I can be overly
cerebral).

With White Sickness, that directness of structure is gone,
and the sentences & paragraphs take on a variety of forms, with
much less strict repetition. Is this directly motivated by the
writings of José Saramago, credited in the liner notes and
from whom the title is taken, known for his extremely long sentences
& paragraphs? Probably not directly, but the greater variety
of musical flow derived from the material makes White Sickness
a more appealing album. Regarding the musical material itself, the
album begins with a solo by Negrini on bass & metallophones,
integrated electronically into something sequentially resembling a
single instrument. It's a striking sound. The main point of the
research into this music would seem to be its use of electronics,
namely in determining an interesting, yet human, way to use them.
As I've remarked, electronics give one the option of making literally
any sound, so they raise more questions than answers. Here the
Italian quartet attempts some answers, coming out of a study of
music, psychology, philosophy, etc. What's an interesting &
distinctive use of electronics in a group improvisation context
that still comes off as human & musical? I don't know that
this question was the focus of their inquiry, but it's what sounds
through to me in the music, and if so, they have good answers.
Personally, where I've been finding electronics most directly
compelling musically is in the opportunity for very clear &
very high tones [*]. Other instruments have difficulty with clarity
in those registers, and clarity gives one the option of keeping
musical relationships and their overtone relationships clear, and
then modifying them. Scoolptures does not use electronics entirely
in this way, also using them to blend sounds as mentioned, and to
manipulate other aspects of their interaction in real time (echoes,
etc.). The sound can be a bit shocking at first, just in its
novelty, presumably hence the relative structural simplicity of
Materiale Umano, but it does open up for the listener after
more hearings. The activity is not especially dense (medium dense,
I suppose), with Antonio Della Marina playing "sine waves"
alongside Achille Succi on clarinet & saxophone. The latter
often dominates the aural surface of the music, with the electronics
coming to the fore more subtly, yet with a lot of power at times.
Philippe Garcia on drums pairs with Negrini to form a creative
rhythm section that more than holds its own in what is in some ways
an almost "traditional" free jazz quartet. (And note
that Materiale Umano includes manipulated vocal material by
Philippe Garcia, as well as Achille Succi playing shakuhachi —
rather distinct from his usually screechy reed emphasis otherwise.)
This is an ambitious album (or set of two albums), successfully
& enjoyably so. The dedication to Saramago makes for a nice
bow on the package.

Speaking of almost-traditional free jazz quartets on the New
Ears list, Zomo Hall by the Foton Quartet out of Poland also
appears there. This is an appealing album, with a fairly quiet
sound & understated fully improvised structure in a traditional
sax-trumpet-bass-drums format. There is a bit more trading of
material between horns and rhythm section than in early free jazz,
but there is something of the same feel, perhaps with a more studied
sophistication than the stereotypical ecstatic blowing. The album
(dated 2010, but not circulated much if at all before 2011) consists
of material from sessions in 2007 & 2008, so it's both the debut
for this group, and not terribly new. I definitely found it enjoyable
and worth hearing, even if the originality is less emphatic.

[*] I guess I'm starting footnotes here: This situation
reminds me of traditional preferences in
Carnatic singing, particularly
as expressed by Ariyakudi Ramanuja Iyengar (1890-1967). The guru
of the modern Carnatic concert format, he also verbalized the view
that intonation should form something of a metaphorical pyramid,
broad at the base and pointed at the top. That is, one could use
a broad rumbling vibrato (mixing with percussion, almost) in the
lower registers, but needed precise intonation in the high register
to align overtones.

7 February 2012

For readers following these pages, the albums
Pool School (released in 2010)
and Polylemma (released in
2011) have obviously had large effects on my personal explorations
and writing here. Also on that short list, at least in the former
category, is Pete Robbins'
Live in Brooklyn. It's an
album stamped with 2010, but that didn't seem to appear until 2011,
so has fallen through the cracks a bit. I was originally intending
to elaborate in my partial recap of 2011, but eventually opted to
wait for Robbins' next release, Transatlantic
Quartet Live in Basel. (And a sequel to Pool School
is also imminent as I write this opening paragraph.)

With Live in Basel, Robbins returns to a much more open
& lyrical style than with Live in Brooklyn, perhaps even
more so than his previous release on his own label,
Silent Z Live. Although I had
at least subconsciously hoped for something that built on the more
challenging style of Live in Brooklyn, I've yet to completely
swear off lyrical or tonal music in this space, and Live in
Basel has its charms. I enjoy Robbins' music, even some of the
more sentimental stuff, as well as his approach to ensemble. There
is also a bit of faster music in e.g. Hoi Polloi with its
setting in sevens, and there is ample opportunity for all the players
to provide interesting counterpoint throughout. It's that interesting
& individual sense of melodic counterpoint that keeps things
engaging, with different players taking the lead at different
times.

Live in Brooklyn features a more atomic style, so in that
way more similar to some of the other mostly European material I've
recently featured here, but very much in its own New York way.
Although tracks on that album are all untitled, it would appear
with familiarity that the interval material is actually taken from
Robbins' compositions that have appeared elsewhere. There's that
haunting bit of familiarity to it — and I will discuss
"familiarity" in more detail soon — that adds a
dimension to the avant garde surface. It's quite a quartet too,
with Robbins supported by Nate Wooley & Daniel Levin, as well
as Jeff Davis on drums (and it looks like Davis is involved in some
other interesting projects set to appear this year). So I guess
Live in Brooklyn was a more singular recording, with its
very sophisticated fusion of classical & rock influences into
an overt jazz sound that develops very quickly within the course
of each piece. Live in Brooklyn is almost a condensation
or distillation of Robbins' material to that point, with "expert
commentary" provided by the other improvisers. In that sense,
it's also interesting as a broader concept, perhaps applicable to
other more tonal styles.

Turning back to Live in Basel, certainly an easier release
to follow, there are also elements of familiarity, explicitly so,
with some of the compositions revisited from earlier albums. I
believe guitarist Mikkel Ploug is the only performer in the quartet
that I had heard previously, but they all do a fine job with this
mostly understated music. This was a case where, despite its
relatively easygoing simplicity, I found myself enjoying it more
the second time around and subsequently. Perhaps that was partly
a matter of setting expectations, but it was also because of the
obvious time the musicians have had to familiarize themselves with
the material.

The topic of familiarity also presented itself naturally in my
immediately preceding discussion of Pete Robbins'
Transatlantic Quartet Live in
Basel, but I chose to write that before taking up this
thread.

Turning first to Feldman, it's been said that his late works
distort memory. They reprise a sound figure over and over, slowly
distorting it. Memory is at work in our recognition of the music,
but do we truly realize that it's not quite the same sounds? I
wrote also that Feldman's music can fit into my everyday life, with
its interruptions, by providing an element of familiarity with which
to return my attention to the music. But this is familiarity as
distinct from sameness.

Joe said that one reason some people don't like newer or more
experimental music is that they enjoy familiarity. It's a good
observation. Certainly there is an element of comfort (or more)
that comes with recognition, and Joe even suggests that familiarity
gives people a way to agree — they can agree that something
is familiar. One can write an entire music article about the ways
a new album or piece of music is familiar, is comparable to earlier
albums or pieces of music. (Or write an entire TV show that's
nothing but cultural references.) And prospective listeners like
to read this kind of thing. It's an indication of what to expect,
and in turn an indication of whether they'll enjoy the experience
of listening to the new album. Even the most radical experimental
effort is similar in its way to the other most radical experimental
efforts, by sharing that same attribute, but that's conceptual
familiarity and not aural familiarity.

Where I find myself specifically questioning familiarity lately
is with recordings of avant garde or experimental music (or whatever
we want to call new music that doesn't sound familiar). I listen
to these items, and I consider writing something about them, or
adding them to a list of recommendations, or what-have-you. I do
this kind of compulsively, I guess, because over the years I sort...
I sort into things I want to hear more, and things I don't (or more
often, I don't care). Sometimes they bore me. Or more to the point
here, it can be something that was once sounding new, but now sounds
familiar — so familiarity can breed contempt, as the saying
goes. If I'm listening to a new recording, and again this is very
much a recording-based phenomenon, because I can listen to the
recording over & over, and at first I'm not really sure what's
happening, or how I'm going to contextualize it or otherwise make
sense of what the musicians are doing (or in some cases, even picking
out who is doing what), and then I feel like I'm starting to
understand it... it's starting to seem familiar. And then I can
say something coherent about it. What would I have said before,
that I'm not really following what's happening? But then the
question remains, by the time it is familiar, do I actually like
it? Can I even make that determination before? Can I capture the
process of familiarization?

So that's a big set of questions regarding how to approach the
current endeavor here. The set of questions also revolves around
recordings I listen to several times in order to digest, and then
don't really like. What is going on there? It is definitely the
case that, barring some bout of insanity on my part (and I can
hardly rule this out!), if I listen to something several times, I
am getting something out of it — it is affecting the way I
hear music. I'm seeking to understand it, right? And once I do,
I decide I don't really have more use for it (a discarded fling?),
but I'm still changed by the experience (right?), assuming engagement.
That's something I want to do a better job of capturing here, and
not only describe familiar recordings I've come to understand &
appreciate.

(Things that immediately sound both familiar and uninteresting
we can probably safely skip.)

So do I try logging everything I hear? That sounds tedious, and
keeping up-to-date notes has never been my strength (and I forget
what I do otherwise; I think I enjoy forgetting,
creative forgetting, a term I
just managed to remember). The other challenge is monitoring
engagement, which is ultimately what makes a flat-linear log so
unappealing to me. I might be interrupted physically or mentally,
I might fall asleep, and it certainly misses those "aha!"
moments — and I wonder how many of them are conscious.
Arguably, we're already deeply culturally conditioned to music in
the womb, and like marketing messages, the subconscious familiarization
might be the more powerful. Perhaps the immediately familiar should
frighten us, if we don't know why it's familiar, instead of reassuring
us. Perhaps one should ask not only: "Why do I enjoy this
music?" But: "Why does it seem familiar?" In what
context might that be good or bad?

(After the opening seeds, this was written in two iterations
along to Pail Bug, for which
an actual discussion is forthcoming.)

13 February 2012

It slipped my attention until recently, but I've added
Beyond Quantum to
my favorites list for 2008. (Mostly
those older years are going to shrink, as items fall off my radar,
or I make the effort to prune.) Part of the reason I didn't notice
this item, I'm sure, is that I didn't really know who Milford Graves
(b.1941) is. He doesn't record frequently, and in fact this is
apparently his latest release. Graves teaming up with Anthony
Braxton (b.1945), as well as William Parker (b.1952) on bass, makes
for quite a group. This is also an interesting item in Braxton's
recent discography, since it doesn't feature his own compositions
or standards, but rather free improvisation by a trio (whereas his
other recent improvised albums have been duos). Parker's recent
discography is extensive & varied, so this item is less notable
for him in that sense, and he acts more as the "glue" for
the other two improvisers, at least until the closing track. The
album doesn't include any discussion, and in fact I got the recording
date from
Jason
Guthartz's site. The graphics are kind of lackluster too, for
such a significant release.

Graves is a cult figure in the world of jazz drumming, having
studied many world traditions extensively, invented his own martial
art, researched healing through music, and using his head as an
implement in performance. The other two performers are much better
known, and I should probably write more about Anthony Braxton at
some point. (I'd really like to see one of his operas staged, but
I digress.) These are definitely some interesting people, and very
accomplished musicians. Beyond Quantum itself is divided
into five distinct improvisations, each establishing a rather
different mood, although it's pretty much always quick & dense.
Ideas move fast, and there are clear but inconspicuous evocations
of African styles as well as elements of jazz history. Overall,
it reminds me of growing up near a swamp in Indiana somehow... it's
very "wet" music. I think I'll leave this entry with
that weird description. At any rate, it's safe to say this recording
became an instant classic. It just took me a little while to
notice.

22 February 2012

A new recording making a strong impression is the
Stone Quartet Live at Vision
Festival. The quartet was formed by bassist Joëlle
Léandre, and does have an earlier recording on the DMG label,
recorded in 2006 (released in 2007). Apparently their concerts
together are infrequent, but there is also a definite sense of
history when these musicians get together. The result is a highly
charged live album that spends a lot of time building expectations,
but ultimately has answers. This is an album that is dominated by
a long (32 minute) opening track, followed by a shorter (9 minute)
second track that takes a different mood. That's the sort of program
I haven't always admired in this space, but here it really works.
The opening track has various episodes, largely defined by when
different musicians are playing. It maintains continuity, but also
changes moods enough that it could almost be separate tracks. I
don't find myself enjoying the second track quite as much, which
is dominated by brighter & more percussive sounds around a
louder trumpet, but it also makes kind of a nice "return to
reality" (or motion) after the transfixing first part of the
program. This is a quartet with two string players, which seems
to be something of a trend in this space, including a recent
discussion of In Just, the
upcoming discussion of Pail Bug,
and of course my ongoing interest in the Daniel Levin Quartet. The
latter would be the most similar ensemble in many ways, because it
likewise functions without a drummer. Another recent release of
vaguely similar inspiration is Hotel du Nord, by the Sylvie
Courvoisier-Mark Feldman Quartet, which includes bassist Thomas
Morgan & drummer Gerry Hemingway. I mention Hotel du Nord
in particular because it sets a pair of string players in a quartet
with a prominent piano part. As suggested by the title, In
Just does not need to deal with the piano's tuning limitations,
and in the case of Pail Bug, the piano is modified so
extensively that the situation around scale & pitch is transformed.
Sylvie Courvoisier plays a basically "straight" piano
part, though, analogous to Marilyn Crispell on Live at Vision
Festival. Whereas, despite the frequently referenced opportunity
for the husband-wife team to practice together, Hotel du Nord
comes off rather stiffly to my ear, Live at Vision Festival
is quite a success at uniting chromatic — even dodecaphonic
— expression within a freer pitch context. There is a
percussive sense to the piano, of course, taken up also on the bass,
but there is a basic chromatic framework where the strings (and
winds) can also operate more freely. Mat Maneri is known for his
tone-row music on the viola, and although he has denied in print
that he is "a microtonal musician" (as was his father),
there is clearly a crossover in these styles that works for him.
Joëlle Léandre likewise seems to handle microtonal slurs
within a twelve-tone context with ease, and perhaps it's also a
fundamental facet of her musicianship. Neither of these aspects
dominates the other, but there is intersecting space for both, and
an opportunity for an engaging interaction that plays out over a
series of episodes.

I've had some familiarity with
Joëlle Léandre
(b.1951) for a while now. She has been a significant Scelsi
interpreter, was there at his death, and has a solo piece dedicated
to her (Mantram). I learned subsequently that she even spent
time in Buffalo (of all places!) while Feldman was a professor
there. Her discography is extensive, and this most recent item,
described as "measured free improvisation" in its notes
(and the word "measured" is significant in the way the
different musical languages are balanced), captures a particularly
strong group in a live festival format. This is a great chance to
hear Léandre play in a context directly connected to New York
jazz, albeit with a distinct European edge, as well as with a larger
ensemble than in the solo or duo releases that seem to dominate her
discography.

Live at Vision Festival appears on Ayler Records with a
copyright date of 2011, although I do not believe it quite made it
out to the public during 2011. Ayler
Records is releasing other interesting items, apparently
unencumbered by notions of tradition, including (earlier in 2011)
Tower, vol. 2 by French guitarist
Marc Ducret in an ensemble
with violinist Dominique Pifarély (with whom I am not otherwise
familiar) and New York mainstays Tim Berne & Tom Rainey. (Volume
1 features an all-European quintet, and is constructed around the
same theme. I find Rainey & Berne consistently engaging, so
focused on listening more intently to Volume 2.) This is clearly
an interesting ensemble, with violin "instead of" bass.
The violin also engages the electric guitar & saxophone in
"noise" outbursts. Apropos my discussion of semantic
& non-semantic music structures in this space, Tower is
actually a different slant on that general dialectic, with Ducret
seeking to set a chapter of the novel Ada by Vladimir Nabokov
directly to (wordless & very abstract) music, using the language
& grammar & syntax as a model for musical structure. I
find it interesting at times, and surely the personnel on Volume 2
is going to produce some interesting music, but the twists and turns
of the musical interaction don't seem to have much of an internal
logic — pushed as they are by this literary source. The
result is basically some captivating (sometimes extended) passages
that move on to elsewhere. The project does seem like a good way
to find new & compelling ensemble textures, and maybe they can
be put to use in a future situation driven more by musical logic.
Perhaps if I had a real appreciation of Nabokov's work, I'd feel
like the result was more compelling than novel-ty. Still, it's
worth hearing. As I understand, four volumes are planned.

22 February 2012

With the sequel to Pool School,
Camino Cielo Echo, recorded
not even a full year after the first recording of the Tom Rainey
Trio, it is in some ways tempting to offer a shorter discussion
here, and move on to different items. Camino Cielo Echo is
both a more polished & less intense outing than
Pool School, one that both
solidifies the originality of the trio's sound, and makes more of
an overture toward engaging the listener. While Pool School
can be impenetrable in its novelty, Camino Cielo Echo is
more quickly accessible — textures are extended & exposed
to view, and allusions to other music & ideas are more explicit
& also extended. Laubrock's playing on saxophone is decidedly
easier to take in on that account, although it also takes on more
distinctive characters in slow passages (e.g. as bowed bass on
Mental Stencil). There are more Asian-like sonorities,
perhaps not intentionally, both in the slower pitch-pending of the
guitar strings and the more spacious rhythmic context.

One can take the extension in time of Camino Cielo Echo
as a neutral event, seeing as it is a relatively long album, with
a variety of distinctive tracks. It has plenty of material, and
the trio is not simply recapitulating their earlier ideas. Indeed,
there are new & intriguing sound worlds here, such as the
multiple-entendre Arroyo Burrow. There is moreover, a more
explicit investigation of trio structure, and consciousness around
e.g. an implied bass role, or not. This is in contrast to the more
intuitive conception on Pool School. Pool School was
a radical album — for those of you who follow my medieval
rating system, it's a four-star album, and Camino Cielo Echo
is two (and for those of you who don't, keep in mind that I think
of a star as a good thing, and two is very good, a clearly recommendable
album). That said, Pool School is also more oblique, and
with a more open musical overture (so to speak) toward the listener
in Camino Cielo Echo, we get a hint of more commentary behind
the wordplay titles. If two thirds of this trio is on the similarly
evocative (and quite compelling, with a similar density to the ear)
The Madness of Crowds, we have
nearly the same dose of social commentary here, but so much more
personal. After all, Mackay's insightful book is historical, whereas
we could align Camino Cielo Echo with more contemporary
writing (e.g. Mike Davis). If Halvorson's specialty on guitar is
deconstruction — Little Miss Strange, presumably — even
if musically attenuated a bit here, it's worked into a broader
conception of slightly veiled deconstruction of Southern California
mythology, down to the explicit noir reference and disguised allusion
to the Arroyo school. This is not merely an evocation of natural
beauty, but rather a commentary on what has happened to that landscape
(and its people), both physically & politically-emotionally.
The album has a kind of ferocious geniality that seems to fit Rainey
himself, not to mention Southern California, marking it as a very
personal statement coming through with remarkable clarity.

29 February 2012

Steve Lehman had a notable creative & critical success with
Travail, Transformation, and Flow,
released in 2009, and I also think quite highly of his album
On Meaning, released already
in 2007. Since then, he released a Dual Identity album with
Rudresh Mahanthappa, and an improvised duo album with Stephan Crump.
Both are probing albums. So I had been wondering what Lehman would
do next, and we "finally" get his next leader album with
Dialect Flourescent here in early 2012. This is a straightforward
sax trio album, half standards, and with a fairly typical jazz
ensemble interaction. I got the impression that he simply felt the
need (or maybe the push) to release a new album, and wasn't ready
to execute whatever new ideas he is working on now. Reading the
notes on the Pi Recordings site, which I was only able to do about
a month after hearing this album and writing most of this entry,
it also seems that Lehman wanted to be very explicit about tying
his music to that of previous generations. There's something to
be said for that, although it's rather difficult to rationalize
this album under Pi Recording's "dedicated to the innovative"
tagline.

It's enjoyable enough, and one thing I'll say about the album
is that, after the solo introduction (featuring electronic echoes)
on the first track, the entry of the bass & drums makes me jump.
So there are some striking moments, and it does come off with
remarkable unity between the standards and new compositions. In
the previously mentioned albums, though, it's really the approach
to ensemble, the way the quintet or octet interrelate that is so
creative & impressive. Dialect Flourescent is much more
conventional in this regard, even if e.g. the 21st century bass
line below a standard jazz melody produces some intriguing combinations.
The album does retain a keen sense of intonation, one that makes
listening to a fixed pitch album (i.e. an ordinary piano trio)
almost grating afterward. That's one way it ties the earlier
material to Lehman's contemporary concerns, and indeed this kind
of transformation — while fairly understated — is
probably significant nonetheless in the broader view, very much of
its time & place.

5 March 2012

I've been promising a discussion of Pail
Bug for a while now, so I'm going to try to oblige before
I turn this page over again. This is one of those albums that,
although outwardly rather strange, I immediately enjoyed and continue
to find stimulating. It's quickly become a favorite. However, the
challenge becomes to describe why. The strangeness of Pail
Bug is almost generic in the sense that it would be all too
easy to describe it in terms that could easily apply to dozens of
other albums, yet fail to pinpoint why I've found it especially
meaningful. So I'm making excuses for myself right from the start,
but also insisting that I come up with something worthwhile to say.
First some background.

Pail Bug is released on drummer Jeff Arnal's own label.
Recent releases had been vinyl singles, which I have no way of
hearing, so this is a departure as a full length album, and in fact
it's an album packed with subtly detailed ideas in five distinct
tracks. Already, I had been intrigued by the
Quadrologues album by Arnal's
quartet, Transit. Quadrologues is still a very interesting
album, with a wide range of ideas, but Pail Bug is entirely
different, with an entirely different ensemble. It apparently
resulted from various intervening experiments, including duo outings
with pianist Dietrich
Eichmann (b.1966) ongoing from 2002. I was taken by what I
called the "epic" sense of time in Quadrologues
— and by that I don't mean a generic sense of awe, but rather
a timeless story of raw human expression, one that seems to meld
past & present & future. Elsewhere, I've been listening
to some of Bill Dixon's albums, and I will write some more about
that soon. In the interim, I was struck by some similarities in
the way time is manipulated... a sort of timeless blend of ancient
& modern... quickly went and did some research for a connection
there, and found they were both at Bennington College. OK. And
then I paid more attention to what I had already read about Arnal,
namely that he had studied with Milford Graves, who is also a
professor at Bennington. That's the history of adding
Beyond Quantum to this site,
an album I'm continuing to find increasingly influential in how I'm
hearing American music, and an outing I explored together with
Pail Bug.

(And it's too bad I didn't put my interests in this area together
back when I lived only a few miles from Bennington. Another strange
twist of life.)

So Pail Bug features extended acoustic technique, various
piano preparations & playing inside the instrument, as well as
modifications & extensions on the basses. It's "almost"
a piano trio, with the two basses functioning as one wide-palleted
instrument. And "almost" in the sense that sonorities
blend between instruments to make it unclear who is doing what.
Overtone relationships are carefully reflected or modified across
instruments, such that instrumental tuning limitations are subsumed
in a very detailed world of sound relationships. What is that
world? There is no discussion about the title to be found, so I'm
going to give some thoughts about that. It could be evocative of
the sound world of a bug found in a metal pail, which is to say, a
large room with a metallic resonance. The different tracks approach
this with different stimuli, but there is also a consciousness of
metallic qualities in the instruments as related to other materials.
Both piano & bass are interesting amalgams of metal & wood
(with some other substances), and percussion likewise moves between
these worlds & others. That sort of thought leads me to a
tangent on historical instruments. The modern string bass with its
metal strings, and the modern piano with its metal sound board, do
not reflect the early history of those instruments. The first
pianos had wooden sound boards, which would make a dramatic difference
in the sound world of Pail Bug. Likewise for gut strings.
Somehow the music & title draw out that hypothetical contrast
between the current world and a sound based more on wood. There
is, moreover, always an internal dialog in music, about how it
chooses its sounds based on the various possibilities available.
That implicit dialog often deals with where a melody will go, or a
chord progression, etc. Here the dialog seems to include choice
of resonant material, a definite and longstanding aspect of percussion
music. That might be the clearest description of what arguably
makes this a percussion album.

That said, there is a fairly oblique description of the material
on Pail Bug at Arnal's
Generate Records
website. The first key phrase there is "extreme magnification
of small sounds and gestures," which might reflect the pail
concept outlined above, but certainly reflects the way the musicians
listen closely to each other and elaborate these sounds &
gestures into an organically derived larger architecture —
"reimagined instrumental potential and architectural
possibility" concludes the web notes. Although it seems sincere
enough, and for that matter, perceptive enough, what this technical
description lacks is any indication of how the listener is affected
by the musical process. Close listening and letting small structures
spontaneously generate larger forms has been a theme in this space,
so although it's a form of collective improvisation that I clearly
value, it doesn't serve to differentiate the album. (And I should
also observe that Arnal's "Generate Records" name surely
relates to this idea in general.) In fact with its lack of wind
instruments, and no clear high pitches from the keyboard, Pail
Bug has almost a monochromatic character via its layered blending
of string & striking across the instruments — or rather,
this broad-spectrum sound would be the opposite of monochromatic,
I suppose, but a mix of earthy colors (browns & rust & such,
like late autumn leaves) that consistently looks similar from a
distance. The close layering, and resulting issues of simultaneity,
make for an interesting model of performer interaction. There is
a bit of a Feldman-esque sense of evolving background and foreground
there, as well as a play on familiarity. The tracks on Pail
Bug are not especially long, but the basic material is so tiny
that it evolves & develops as if over a giant canvas. This is
related to the "epic" sense, as well as to playing tricks
on our notions of familiarity (and to the idea of being a bug,
presumably). Where did this piece start? Wait, that was drums?
Indeed, track #1 can present as lacking percussion, which only
enters more definitively with track #2.

Whereas Pail Bug can be intellectually stimulating to
discuss, it is intellectually stimulating to hear. I mean this
distinctly, in that it is conducive to exploring one's own ideas
internally. There is also a distinct sense of bodily satisfaction
for having heard it. I find both of these factors to be consistently
true, and this is where my explanation flags. How or why does this
happen? I can only turn to Milford Graves' study of the effect of
music on human health & metabolism, and work in modeling musical
forms off of human rhythms. This idea seems to be consciously at
play here. Some of the striking certainly modulates one's breathing,
for instance, adding physical relaxation to a sense of intellectual
probing. (The mental effort of monitoring my body & following
the effects on that level together with the intellectual stimulation
is daunting, however, although maybe less so for others.) How can
dissonant & sometimes screechy music be both relaxing and
stimulating to creative thought? Via layering & simultaneity
(and note these are ostensibly rhythmic terms)? However it works,
it works, at least for me. One lesson, obvious in retrospect, would
seem to be the relationship between "epic" or storytelling
and the audience's physical state, something that the performers
manipulate brilliantly. Presumably one's emotional state is also
mediated by one's level of comfort with the proceedings generally,
although the idea of "submission" as suggested for Feldman
does raise itself. Surely Arnal's work with dance plays a significant
role too, suggesting a dramatic evolution of "tap your foot"
music far beyond groove. Note also that, despite the strange
postmodern surface to the sound, if I'm correct, the specific
inclination to solve a musical problem makes Pail Bug a
definite modernist success.

I'll conclude by noting that although the the Generate Records
website says that Pail Bug was released in December, I have
doubts that it was actually available anywhere before January. In
any event, I noticed it then on
Squidco, so this discussion
reflects several weeks with the recording. Pail Bug was
recorded in Berlin back in December of 2009, so a full two years
passed before the recording appeared. I can only wonder what these
performers have been doing lately.

6 March 2012

And speaking of Pail Bug, I
only just noticed that Dietrich Eichmann wrote one set of liner
notes for Jeff Arnal's Transit
album (recorded in 2001, released in 2005). I hadn't wanted to
include anything so early in my listings, but I'm kind of retroactively
blown away by how original Transit continues to be. Amazing.

That said, this page is going to move to an archive very soon,
and a new introduction will stand in this spot, complete with
thoughts on some of the pillars of American jazz.